CHICAGO — A South Loop man spent more than a year planning the perfect proposal for his girlfriend.
And on Friday, she said "yes."
Josh Schmitz, 29, said he wakes up early for work nearly every morning. He writes a note to his girlfriend, Danielle Roesch, telling her about his day and what he did the day before. When he gets back from work, he reads a similar notes Danielle has left for him.
Josh likes to look back at these notes, reminiscing of their time together and what they've done. More than a year ago, he decided he wanted to propose to Danielle, but it would have to be big — and it'd have to be a surprise. Danielle loves surprises, he said.
"I wanted some kind of epic proposal," Josh said. "The moment I met Danielle was just ... [there] was something just different about her. I've never wanted to spend that much time with someone and never got sick of spending that much time with someone."
Josh looked to the notes he and Danielle had shared. They inspired him to spend more than a year recording a video each day, eventually stitching together the hundreds of clips into a video that celebrated their lives together.
Josh also wrote love notes to Danielle in every clip, making sure to bring a white board or paper with him so he'd always be able to write her a message: "I want to spend forever with you," "I love you a little more every day," "You are the light of my life!" He proposed to her again and again in the notes.
Josh planned to spend a year working on the project, but he quickly became anxious to propose.
"The first month, two months, I'm like, 'This is so exciting,'" Josh said. "And then I was like, 'I've got 10 more months to go. This is going to be a long time.'"
But Josh held out: He had his heart set on proposing on Aug. 19. They'd had started dating Oct. 8, and their birthdays are on the 19th in different months. He combined the dates for his proposal, hoping it would give the day even more significance.
And and on Friday he had Danielle brought to the Adler Planetarium, where she and her friends and family — flown in from as far away as London — watched the full video.
Afterward, she walked to the lakeshore, where Josh got on one knee and proposed. Danielle said "yes."
[Courtesy Hayley Burns]
"I wanted to show her how much I love her by doing that," Josh said. "She's always behind me, everything I do. Any big idea I have she's always there to back me up. Words cannot even describe how she makes me feel."
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