Ceremony

Time:	1:00PM
Location:	St. Edward & Isidore Parish
	3667 Flintville Rd, Suamico, WI 54313

Reception

Location	Swan Club
	875 Heritage Rd, De Pere, WI 54115
5:00PM	Cocktail Hour
6:00PM	Dinner

Our Story

We Meet

We met at St. Isidore Parish in the youth choir. Kelly was a singer and I was a bass guitar player. I took notice of her wonderful singing voice and was interested immediately! Of course, I had to play it cool so naturally I took a year to make my move.

Get her attention

After taking a year to play it cool, it was time for my master plan to begin. Step 1: Get her attention. What better way to get someone's attention than to use Facebook. Poking her would have been too cliche so I went for the suddle "make a comment on a random post of hers". I found a nice picture of her building a snowman and made my move. "Nice Snowman!" - Jake Sarosiek. Solid start.

Let's try that again

Well step 1 didn't go quite according to plan. Turns out you don't usually get to have a full blown conversation to confess your feelings for someone via comments on a post on Facebook. I knew I had to take a drastic step to woo this girl. Actually have a conversation via Facebook messenger. But when would it not seem creepy and random? A young Jake pondered for some time. Finally, on a lonely New Years Eve, I took my chances and sent the most random "Happy New Years" at midnight to Kelly. That got the ball rolling.

Our first date

Our first date was nothing flashy as it was a simple lunch and movie at her house, but it was all we needed to find out that we were perfectly krazy together. According to plan, I played the awkward guy card perfectly by spilling soup on myself and "Yes Man" sealed the deal as we sat on opposite sides of the couch to ensure maximum romance. After all of it, she still wanted to see me again!

The tale of Foo Foo & Mr. Penguin

The story of Foo Foo the garden flamingo and Mr. Penguin the penguin coffee cup is quite the eccentric one. You see, they are lovers, but it took several fortunate events for them to even meet! Back when Kelly and I were in the choir we used to have christmas parties at our director's house. We always did a white elephant exchange. That's where I first met Foo Foo. I could have ended up with the old teapot or random candles, but it was destiny that I got Foo Foo. Being in high school meant that there were school dances that gave me the added pressure of needing a date. Unfortunately for Foo Foo, even though we both enjoy salmon, I had higher ambition than an inanimate object. When Kelly said yes to be my date, I knew I had to help Foo Foo out. Luckily, that same white elephant exchange where I got Foo Foo, Kelly got Mr. Penguin. Seeing that they were both birds, they fell for each other.

The Proposal

When coming up with the master plan for a proposal, my mind took me on some wild adventures as to what I could do. I came up with several different ideas during this time. Some were simple and to the point such as taking a walk in a park and picking a spot to pop the question. For those of you who know me can probably guess I decided to go a little more elaborate than that. For those of you who know Kelly know that she is very tough to surprise so it was going to take quite a bit of work to get the surprise factor. That's when some of the crazy plans started to come out. There was an option to go sky diving and attempt to propose at several thousand feet up. That one did not last long for obvious reasons. Not very romantic with some other person on top of you. So on to the next idea.

After thinking about some of our favorite places we had been to, I decided that I wanted to do it at The Red Mill in Waupaca. It is a beautiful old mill with a creek running through. It's a place we stop by every time we go out to Waupaca for some kayaking. Once I had decided to propose there, the rest of it was a piece of anything but cake. I knew I wanted to do everything possible to surprise her. I came up with the idea to pretend to be away on a business trip to Arizona to try and throw her off the scent.

The weekend finally came to propose so I "left for my trip" on Friday. Everything was lining up perfectly and she didn't suspect a thing...until something went terribly wrong. I was sending Kelly updates as to where we were on our trip and I had just sent her a message saying that we had landed in Milwaukee when she was calling me. She was in tears saying that she had gotten into a car accident and was very shooken up by it. She was not injured, but her car was totaled. I had a choice to make at this point whether I should go on with the plan or scratch it. After talking to her parents, we decided to go through with the plan and they would help her out.

The plan was to propose on Sunday so I had some time to have an arts and crafts night at my friend Cory's house to make the rest my materials for the proposal. After finishing up the wood pieces, I was all set for the big day.

The next day I drove down to Waupaca early with my sister Jackie who would be taking secret photos with my parents close behind. We had the chance to hang up the wood pieces in a trail loop leading to me. Kelly was busy that morning at a wedding show... preproposal...with her parents to keep her distracted. Around noon, her parents and her friend Hailey drove her down to Waupaca just for fun and stopped by the Red Mill. I had written a note and made another wood piece that Hailey could give to Kelly a few minutes before arriving at the Red Mill just saying sorry I couldn't be here this weekend and that hopefully the note would make up for it. Finally, they arrived at the Red Mill. It was go time.

Kelly and Hailey started walking down to where we were all hidden with her parents close behind video recording it. As they came down towards us, they started walking down the wrong trail and started finding the wooden pieces backwards. It still worked out as she had a team of people to find them. Eventually, they made their way back around to us and I popped out to surprise her. It was time to ask the question, but before kneeling I had to get the ring back. I put the ring inside of the wood piece I had made most recently for her that she had been carrying around since she got there. I got it back and got down on one knee and the rest is history.

My code 2018/12/24 12:23