People will often spend weeks, if not months, planning a proposal, wanting it to be perfect in every way, and knowing it’ll be one of the most important moments in their life.
Understanding this, 22-year-old Devyn Chapman from Indiana, US, started putting his plan into place five months ago, (February ’18) wanting to make his proposal to girlfriend Valerie Lau truly magical.
Every year, Valerie’s family plant a field of sunflowers on their farm, and create a maze out of it to encourage more customers to come and visit.
This year, Devyn asked them to write a secret message in the field for him:
Speaking exclusively to UNILAD, Devyn admitted, originally, the proposal idea was actually imagined by one of the couple’s friends:
I’ve been with my fiancé, Valerie, since 2014, when two of our mutual friends set us up to go to senior prom together. We started dating that summer before we went to college.
She’s kind, funny, and very smart. I’ve known I wanted to marry her for a while but I’ve been planning this proposal since the beginning of the year.
Her parents have a family farm in Paris, Illinois (L&A Family Farms). The last three years they’ve got into agritourism by creating a sunflower maze, with a different design every year.
Their goal is to educate people on where their food comes from in a fun, family friendly way. The sunflower maze has been a huge success and gets bigger every year!
Valerie has a friend named Haley Gates who originally brought up the idea about a year ago, whenever we’d been joking and tossing around proposal ideas. When I heard the idea I knew it was perfect and brought the idea up to Valerie’s family. When they were thinking of maze designs for 2018, this is also how I brought up to her family that I wanted to marry her.
More than happy to oblige, Valerie’s family wrote ‘marry me’ followed by a gigantic question mark to represent the big question Devyn was asking.
Getting down on one knee in the middle of the field, Valerie of course said yes!
A nervous Devyn was pretty thankful Valerie said yes, and was thrilled she loved the surprise he’d spent months planning.
He told UNILAD how all the hard work had paid off:
Whenever Valerie would ask about the maze design her family would tell her that it wasn’t anything special this year and even had a decoy design to convince her further.
When the moment finally came and I showed her the picture of what it really was, she just couldn’t believe that it really had been what it was. I showed her the picture in the maze and proposed there seconds later.
I was nervous as any guy proposing would be. The fact that I had this whole setup and I had been with Valerie for so long made it easier, but getting down on one knee and presenting a ring is a moment you want to be perfect and is something you’ll never forget.
When she said yes it didn’t feel real. I thought about the rest of our lives together and just what this really meant. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.
She really loved the surprise and said that I couldn’t have done better.
It’s an extremely cute and thoughtful surprise so of course Valerie was going to love it!
You can watch Devyn’s proposal here, which features Valerie saying ‘oh my gosh’ and ‘are you serious’ plenty of times:
Despite suspecting Devyn going to propose this summer, (having discussed getting married), Valerie had no idea it was coming when they visited the farm.
She told UNILAD, she loved the fact her whole family were involved in keeping it a secret:
We’d been talking about getting married so I kind of suspected it would happen this summer and have something to do with sunflowers but I didn’t think it would be this big!!!
My hands were shaking! It still doesn’t feel real. I was so excited.
I think it’s the sweetest thing! I love that he involved my parents and they knew the whole time what was going on! My mum actually designed it and my brother and two other employees did all the work in the field making sure it was perfect.
Having thought about her wedding since she was aged 12, Valerie is now looking forward to planning their special day.
Although the date hasn’t been officially set, the couple are hoping for a February wedding.
Congratulations Valerie and Devyn! We wish you both a lifetime of happiness!
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