The first time I had ever heard of Robert Day was when I was a Laurel in Young Women's. Another girl in my ward was dating him. Flash forward a couple of years. Robert just got off his mission to Thailand and the first time I saw him was at the single's ward sometime in October. But only I noticed him that week and he didn't notice me till he came back to the ward a few months later.
Mid-April came around and Robert came back to the single's ward and that's when he noticed me. For some reason he went to the church earlier than usual (probably because his brothers had to go early to help set up for the sacrament), and choir practice was going on. At the time I was the choir pianist and he decided to come and join the choir (I guess he noticed me the week before because he asked his brother, who is my age, about me and learned about my Chinese heritage). While he was in the choir, he would "loudly" speak the Chinese he had learned for a semester at BYU-I to a kid that was going on a Mandrain speaking mission, and of course I noticed. Not just because he sort of knew Chinese, but because I could tell he was saying it loud enough for me to hear (and the fact that he would occasionally glance my way). I don't think he knows this, but I kept trying not to smile because of how obvious it was he was trying to impress me (and it was cute. He was cute. Ha.).
So the choir performed that day and later that night I was checking my Facebook and saw that I had a new friend request. It was Robert. I was already friends with his brothers on Facebook, so I figured I might as well add him (I usually only add people I have talked to in real life). Then I got a wall post that was written in Chinese (yeah, he was definitely trying to impress me) that said something like: "Good job on the piano today! You played really well!" So after that we started messaging back and forth. His family went to Hawaii a couple of days after that Sunday, but we had already planned our first date over Facebook, and he even asked for my number over Facebook (cheesy, but hey, he was thousands of miles away).
So... the first date. Since Robert was going to BYU Idaho, most of our initial conversations were long distance, and he would travel down on the weekends to come see me. For the first date we planned on bowling and going to Thai Ruby for Thai food. We went bowling because I was taking a bowling class at the time, and we ate Thai food because he served in Thailand, and I told him my dad served a mission speaking Thai, Laotian and Cambodian and that I loved Thai food. Even though the date sounded so fun (it involved things I liked), I was still super nervous. I was never really good on dates, and the previous weekend I had just gone on the worst date ever. So yeah. Super nervous. Needless to say, the date went terribly. Robert was being his goofy outgoing self, while I was being my nervous, social anxiety self. It was pretty awkward for the both of us. So I got home from the date feeling pathetic and depressed and I was thinking, "I am never going to get married. At least in this life." But then, a miracle happened. Robert texted me later that night and we talked for a bit, and he asked me if I wanted to go to his buddy's mission homecoming (I later found out he had talked to his friends about the awkward date, but he gave it some thought and decided to give me a chance).
The next day we went to the homecoming talk. It was still awkward like the night before, but I really tried my best to open up a bit. Kinda worked. But hardly. During the meeting, Robert wrote down the Thai alphabet and we wrote notes back and forth to each other in Thai. Not real Thai words, but just using Thai symbols to make out American words. I thought our second encounter went better, and from there we planned our second date and third date. Our second date was watching Tangled (my grandparents have the DVD, so we went and picked it up from them and that was the first time he met my grandparents) and we made brownies. We went to his house to make the brownies and to watch Tangled. That was the first time I met his parents, which later I found out they kind of didn't like me at first because apparently Thomas (Robert's brother) told his family I rejected him when he asked me out for ice cream. Okay, I am going on a tangent here because I need to tell my side of the story. First of all, I never rejected him. Second of all, he never asked me out for ice cream. He asked me out twice, once to go on a possible outing with his brothers to Temple Square and the second to go mini golfing, but both times he never followed up on the dates, so technically it wasn't my fault. I'm kinda glad those fell through because dating his brother would have been a tad awkward (it was awkward enough). Okay, back to the story. We had our second date on a Friday when he came down for the weekend to watch the BYU Rugby National Championship, which was our third date on Saturday. From there we saw each other pretty much every weekend, but some weekends were skipped because he had to save money on trips or he couldn't find a ride down.
Fast forward to the day he proposed. It was his birthday. September 21st. For his birthday, he wanted to go to Lion King 3D up in Salt Lake, to eat at Tucanos and to do baptisms for the dead at the Salt Lake temple. We drove up to Salt Lake, and Robert suggested we change into our church clothes so that when we finished eating we could head straight over to the temple. We got to the Gateway mall (where the movie theater is and where Tucanos is) and changed into our clothes there, but then he said that there was a change of plans and we got back in the car and drove to Temple Square. We entered the Joseph Smith Memorial building and got into the elevators and went to the top floor. We ate dinner at The Roof Restaurant. It was a fancy place! After dinner we walked over to the temple to do baptisms, but Robert wanted to sit down for a minute. We sat. We talked. He proposed. I cried. We kissed. Then we went and did baptisms. It was a good day.
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| My ring |
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| The bench he proposed at... but this was a few months before the proposal. |
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| At the reception |
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