Over two decades ago Jonah’s mom began a consignment sale business with annual sales. Rebecca’s mom was at one of the very first of these sales and Rebecca grew up going to these sales twice a year. In 2020, two years after Jonah’s mom and sister opened a permanent consignment shop, they saw Rebecca working at another store and recognized her from those sales. They emailed Rebecca’s mom and asked if Rebecca would be interested in working for them. It took 3 years of working at Beanstalk for Rebecca and Jonah to meet. But in January of 2023, Jonah came into the store to work on a project. Apparently there were attempts at flirting but Rebecca, being naturally oblivious, did not pick up on any of them. Jonah mentioned to his mom afterward that Rebecca was cute and said she could pass along his number if she was interested. Beth (Jonah’s mom), always one to be counted on in this type of situation, then texted Rebecca a very long paragraph all about Jonah on a Friday evening. (Jonah also got one of these texts about Becca.) Rebecca, not knowing quite how to respond, says nothing until the next day when she responds with a lunch order for a beefy 5 layer burrito. After much debating for a week and multiple texts to the girls group chat, Rebecca does decide to text Jonah however. And so it began…

Jonah and I had talked about not having enough nice photos of us together and wanting more. So we made plans to take some after church one Sunday at The Raleigh Art Museum. We stopped by the mall directly after church to look around for a bit before. I knew Jonah wasn’t very interested in what I was looking at, and he had mentioned that his feet hurt so I didn’t want to stay too long. I tried a few things on but wanted to be mindful of not keeping us out too long. This was apparently inconvenient of me. We then arrived at the park and I asked Jonah if I should bring my purse and hairbrush. “No you probably won’t want to be carrying stuff.” I suspected nothing. We began walking around. Jonah had explained that he saw the exact area he wanted to take our photo in a picture online. It had a specific background of tall grass that would look good. No suspicions. We walked around a lot of the park and were unable to find this area. Jonah wanted to keep walking around and looking. I think he is really excited about some specific grass. We eventually turned a corner and I saw a friend of Jonah’s sister who is a photographer. We began to walk towards her to say hello and I saw she had a set up of flowers and photos in front of her blowing in the wind. I assumed she was setting up some artistic type of shoot. Zero connections were being made. Jonah walked in front of Sarah and the display, I walked waayyy to the edge, away from my own engagement and tell Jonah to move out of the way because he’ll mess up her photos. Once Jonah got down on one knee and began proposing, I was so happy and surprised that all conscious thought left my head. I have no real recollection of what I said or did in that moment and I cannot be held responsible. He should have made sure the ring went on the correct hand.

I had an elaborate plan that involved tricking Becca into setting up her own proposal under the guise of our photographer friend, Sara, needing to “test a location.” Sara liked the idea but told me to just bring Becca to a place we’d never been too while looking nice. I was convinced Becca would see through this immediately but agreed it was more simple. That morning, while getting ready for church, I checked my pocket no less than 20 times to make sure the ring wasn’t going to slip out and that I hadn’t forgotten it. This habit continued all day. After church I needed to distract Becca until 3pm so Sara could set up everything. So I took her to the mall thinking that would easily be enough to keep her busy. For whatever reason there was no meandering through stores and walking through the same section four times, which is Becca’s standard shopping experience. At one point she was down to five minutes a store. I needed to text Sara to confirm details and that everything was on track. My plan was to do so while Becca was trying on clothes, but on this trip she miraculously couldn’t find anything to try on in most stores. I made an excuse to go to the bathroom so that I could text without Becca getting suspicious. An excuse I used many times after that. Anyway, Sara texted me that she was running a little bit late which was horrible news because by then Becca was done at the mall. And then it hit me. A stroke of genius. “Take her to the bookstore. She can spend hours in there!” She was done in fifteen minutes… I ended up needing to make two more bathroom excuses and run two more “errands” before I finally took her to the art museum where Sara was waiting for us. The plan was for Sara to drop a pin so I could walk to her exact location because I had never been. I missed the notification that had her location, and she resorted to sending me pictures of landmarks around her so I could try to piece together where the setup was. I figured out Sara was waiting on the other side of the hill and intentionally walked around so we were facing the right way for pictures. Becca and I were almost to where we need to be before I heard, “Is that Sara over there?” I said “Maybe” and kept trying to get her to where Sara had directed me to be to start the shoot. Finally we get there as Becca says “I’m pretty sure that’s her.” So I said, “Well, let’s go say hi.” As we walked down Sara started getting a few pictures. Becca walked away from me, way to the side and told me to “Get out of her shot!” The wind was incredibly strong so Becca couldn’t see that the pictures hanging up on the setup Sara made were actually of us. Eventually I got her back close to me while I was standing in front of the flowers and our pictures. It was time. As I reached in my pocket, got on one knee and started to say “Will you marry me?”, Becca gasped and said “WHAT?! NO?!” as she finally pieced together what was happening. Somehow I am blamed for putting the ring on the wrong finger. However, she initially reached out to take the ring so I tried to hand it to her. She didn’t take it and said I had to put it on. So I told her to give me her hand and she gave me the wrong one. Which is somehow my fault.