Emily & Brandon

Posted Monday, March 08, 2010 11:55 AM

Geocaching is a hobby that both Brandon and I enjoy together. If you’ve never heard of it, geocaching is a real-life treasure hunt! People hide caches, or containers, full of toys, log books, pencils, etc., in the woods and around communities and post the latitude and longitude coordinates for the cache online. Interested cachers go online and download the info and then, using a GPS, they go out into the world and find the caches.

On the day of the proposal, Brandon told me that our pastor had recently hidden his very first cache and we had to be the “First to Find” on it (which in the geocaching world is a pretty big deal!). So we jumped in the car and drove down to Joe Meyers woods, which is a little way outside of our hometown.

After loading his GPS with the coordinates, Brandon and I made our way into the woods to find the cache. After a few hundred feet of walking, I spotted the cache right away, tucked inside a hollow tree stump. Thinking Brandon was stupid to completely walk by it, I scolded him, saying, "I can't believe you missed it! It's right here!"

After opening the container, I realized that it wasn’t a normal cache. Inside was a small gold gift bag instead of the normal cache contents. Still, I had no idea what was going on until Brandon pulled out the ring box, tucked neatly away in the container, and got down on one knee. After a few sweet words, he said, "Emily, will you marry me?" and opened the ring box. This is when I finally realized that it was for real and said, "Yes! Of course I'll marry you!"

After a few hugs and kisses, Brandon said, "And I have one more surprise for you. Look over there!" He pointed to a fallen tree and hiding in full camo gear was Pastor Jeff and his son Sam. Jeff had taken pictures of the whole thing and I’d had no idea! Now the entire proposal is captured shot-by-shot on film!

After some "Congratulations" and a couple of excited phone calls, we posed for a few shots, with the beautiful backdrop of the fall woods, as a newly engaged couple!