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Apple Orchard Engagement | Rachel + Chase

“One Sunday while watching football, I caught her on Wikipedia studying all of the positions and what purpose they serve on the field. It was about an hour later that she made the comment that our tight ends weren’t blocking and our quarterback was throwing off of his back foot and missing his receivers. That’s when I knew we would be critiquing the Bears together for the rest of our lives.”

Rachel + Chase met at work. They were both fairly new to the Chicago office when they were introduced. “My boss took me over to his desk, and I wasn’t very interested in the beginning. We didn’t interact much until October when we both went to a charity event for work, and he asked me to take his picture with the kids. He asked me to text him the picture, but I think it was his way of getting my number. From October to the next April he would pretend to have errands to run near where I lived so he could walk me home, or he would read blogs on my favorite shows so he could find an excuse to come up to my desk and talk to me. People thought we were dating long before we were because of how often he was at my desk. He didn’t give up even though it took me a while to come around! Finally after brunch at Mindys in late April which was then followed by a dinner date the same day, I had finally agreed to start seeing each other regularly.”

After things became “official”, it was only a matter of time before Chase would pop the question.

“The first week of July I noticed Chase starting to act weird and he seemed stressed. I figured it was because of work because I knew he was having a tough week. I had taken the week off work and planned to go boating with our friends. Chase hadn’t confirmed if he was coming yet and so I went without him. Little did I know that he was planning to propose that night and he lost the ring. The ring was overnighted earlier that week and was supposed to get to him by Wednesday morning and it hadn’t. He had been trying to track down the FedEx truck that had the ring in it. It finally arrived at about 2pm that day and so Chase was eventually able to meet us on the boat under the stipulation that we had to leave by 5pm to go home and help with dinner. His parents were celebrating their own anniversary that night and had both sides of the family coming over for dinner.

“We got home and asked what would could help with. His mom requested we go up to the apple orchard and grab a cooler she had put up there. All week she had been going back and forth on having cocktail hour in the orchard with the family but wasn’t sure if it would work logistically. Chase and I drove up there to find a ‘55 Chevy pickup truck with a small cooler sitting in the middle of one of the rows. I noticed when I opened the cooler it only had champagne and items for dirty martinis, which is my favorite drink. I was looking at it thinking it was an odd set up for a party of roughly 25 people, and when I turned around Chase was on one knee. As he was doing his speech, I noticed that his parents had mowed a heart into the field behind us, which I thought was amazing. We got to spend about an hour in the orchard, sitting on the tailgate, just the two of us. We called our friends and family that couldn’t be there. Eventually we ended up joining the party and announced to the larger group that we were getting married! The entire night was so much fun – we had a built in engagement party that we hadn’t intended on!”

Rachel + Chase, it’s clear you two belong together. Congrats on your engagement!