Engagement ceremony (or tea ceremony) is a Vietnamese tradition where the groom pays respect with gifts and asks the bride’s family permission to marry their daughter. The bride and groom with their family then pick a good date for their wedding. Close friends and family please arrive at 4:00 pm. Ceremony will start at 5:00 pm, follow by reception at 6:00 pm.

He knows I love fishing, but we usually take our own boats and fish by ourselves. Today, he booked a private fishing charter, here I thought he wanted to learn how professionals fish so we could set up similar tackles and baits. Of course we had to get up super early to have better chances of catching anything. I usually sleep in but today I woke up at 3 am to study for my super hard midterm that was going to take place around noon (The charter was booked before I knew my midterm was on today, and I didn’t want to go at first but he had spent so much on booking the charter, so fml right I was just gonna have the boat turned in earlier.) By the time we caught a small mahi, I got nauseous, maybe because I didn’t have enough sleep or too anxious to go back home so I could study more. Normally I’d want to stay out all day but not today. However, everything worked out to Dave’s advantage. Me being tired and not paying attention to anything let Dave and his crew sneaked around easier to get the ring inside the fish and they talked about how it’s gonna happen without me knowing. We decided to call it after only 1 tiny mahi mahi and the boat started to go back. Before we docked, Dave wanted to take a picture with the fish and I was thinking out loud “uhm why, this fish is small”, but Dave insisted. When he was holding the mahi, he suddenly asked me to check what was in the fish’s mouth, I saw some fishing line sticking out. I took the line out and there was this beautiful shiny diamond ring. I (still tired and sleep deprived) was so confused, and I awkwardly yelled out “did we just catch a diamond ring?? omg”. Dave laughed and then was on his knee!! He popped the question, awkwardly I might add (stage fright maybe). I was stunned, surprised, still somewhat confused, also awkward, I said YES! I couldn’t stop smiling as he told me he’d been waiting for the right moment to ask me to marry him. And so the rest is history. Also, we’re very awkward people.