It’s the first thing we all ask for when a visiting musician gets on stage and the number 1 way to a Greystone Girl’s heart - proposal stories! And what better time to get all the juicy details from our Head Staff than Valentines Day?

We asked the question so that you don’t have to! So pull up a chair and listen in - we’re all heart eyes over here today!

Gervais proposed to me at Greystone!

I started working for camp full time after I graduated from Converse. Katie and I were living together at Westgate (Lell’s house now) Gervais came to visit me at camp.

And, right there at Westgate, he got down on one knee and proposed. He had a beautiful solitaire diamond ring for me and a bottle of champagne for us to celebrate!

Proposal 1:
Over the phone…in the middle of a conversation..

• Jimboy: “So….IF I asked you to marry me, what would you say?”
• Margaret: “Wait…what? Are you asking me to marry you?”…
• Jimboy: “yeah, I guess I am!”….
• Margaret: “then I guess I would say, yes.”.
• Jimboy: “Then I guess we are engaged!” So romantic!

Proposal 2: After Jimdaddy and Libby said that the first proposal didn’t count since Jim hadn’t spoken with my father nor given me a ring, they invited us to go to New York City with them.

We took a walk early in the morning to the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. He had me sit down on the toadstool then got down on one knee and presented the ring with the now “official”….“Margaret, will you marry me?”… I said “yes” this time as well. :)

Long story short, he made a plan of fun things to do on our Saturday off in Colorado (he made me think that I was choosing all the activities).

We went on a drive up to Estes Park, went for Ice Cream (for breakfast), grabbed sandwiches (for lunch) and went on one of my favorite hikes up in Rocky Mountain National Park. At the top of the hike, there is a beautiful lake called Emerald lake, where we set up our ENOs and had some snacks as a treat after a very long hike.

It was actually kind of gray and cloudy, but just as the sun started to go down, the clouds broke and the sun came out, James hopped out of the hammock and got down on one knee (which was very funny…considering I was in a hammock - I had to lean out to see what in the world he was doing) and he said all these nice things that I don’t remember and then popped the question! I was so confused and overwhelmed I made him do it all over again before I said yes :)

Rob took me to what he claimed was a “nice cabin” his family owned in the woods. It had no electricity, no running water, and an actual outhouse to go to the bathroom.

There were snake skins on the floor, and dust about an inch thick. He tried to light a fire in the fireplace, but chimney was clogged, so the cabin filled with smoke.

He tried to cook my favorite food (homemade macaroni and cheese but he picked Velvetta as a substitute) over his camping stove burner, and the pan was too small, so it wouldn’t boil, so the pasta was crunchy.

While I had a bite in my mouth and was trying to chew it, he says “I think I love you and I think I want to marry you.” And I said, “you think?” and he says, “well yeah”…and so we got engaged.

We joined my family last minute for a trip to the beach over Labor Day and that Saturday, Peter asked me to take a walk on the beach. My brain started going on overdrive thinking I was seeing signs (he had on shorts with pockets!! Even though pretty much all guy shorts have pockets!).

Peter was chit-chatting like nothing was up, but I couldn’t form a coherent sentence. Halfway down the beach I stopped him and said, “Is something going to happen? Because if not, I’m getting my hopes up and I just need to know if something is going to happen.” POOR GUY.

We got down to the end of the beach and he proposed. Of course I immediately started crying (on top of sweating bullets because it was August at noon in SC) and then throwing up because that’s what I do when I get excited (again, poor guy). I said no about 10 times out of shock before I said yes!

Josh and I took a trip to Charleston in the Fall, and he knew that this was the last time we were going to see my parents until Christmas, so he had a deadline since he knew I would want to tell them in person.

Starting at 8:00am in the morning, Josh carried the ring in his pocket ALL day long waiting to find the “perfect” spot in downtown Charleston to propose. The ring weighed extra heavy when Greystone Alum Ann Marshall planned our entire wedding during dinner!

It was almost midnight when we got back to Ann’s house, and Josh finally had to propose. I ripped the ring out of the box and threw the box across the room.

When we returned to camp on Sunday, Laura realized that he never technically said, “Will you marry me?” and I never said, “yes.” So Josh “officially” proposed in front of the bread oven in the Greystone Kitchen.

Basically, because we met on Match.com, from the get go we had established that we were looking for a relationship that would be marriage.

After our first date (after 6 weeks of writing and a few phone calls in which we got to know each other), Greg told me that he wanted to make sure that I would not date anyone else and that we were together every weekend as we lived 4 hours away from each other, so marriage became a part of our conversation from that point on.

We met online in March, in November we went to a jewelry store as Greg wanted me to pick out a diamond that I liked. He then asked Jim Daddy for my “hand in marriage” on one of his weekend visits to camp.

Then in early December I drove to Chattanooga for our weekend date, and when I arrived at his office where he worked, he closed the door and got down on his knee to ask me if I would marry him. I knew a proposal was coming, but it was still a surprise that day, and brought tears to my eyes with all the emotions that come from knowing that you will spend the rest of your life with someone you love so much!