Jess & Max
JessRomano
&MaxCinq-Mars
September182021
Cape Neddick, ME
Our Story
How We Met
The website template tells me that I need to share this information which strikes me as odd and irrelevant, but if you're really jonesing to know, we went to high school together. Didn't start dating until half-way through college and a few states apart. Half of an adventurous lifetime later, and here we are.
What can we say? We do things on our time.
The Proposal
It was personal, and overwhelmingly lovely.
February 29th and we were just shy of the summit of Mt. Pierce in the White Mountains on a winter hike. It was cold and bright and snowing and the trail conditions were perfect, as confirmed by the full parking lot in Crawford Notch. Max asked a (rather grumpy, but choices were limited) woman to take our picture at a trail intersection, and I tried to shoo her off as quickly as possible when she was done while Max asked her to wait just a moment. I had nearly wrestled his phone back from her when he pulled out the ring, at which point she screamed back to the rest of her already departed party who was hurrying her along 'WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP AND WAIT A *FREAKING SECOND, THIS MAN IS PROPOSING'.
*Edited slightly for audience consideration.
My mind went blank; this incredible man wants to marry me.
I think I said 'of course' instead of 'yes', and I'm pretty sure I took the ring too quickly, which I have replayed a million times over and wish I could've done differently. In the moment, there was a little (but very loud) part of my brain that saw only one very small, bright circle hovering over an endless white landscape where I imagine things just *disappear*.
Anyhow, ever the practical engineer, Max kept it short and to the point and photos taken by the grumpy woman show nearly a dozen heavily bundled, brightly-clad hikers in the background that get disconcertingly closer with each frame. We drank champagne on the way down; with two hiking poles and insulated mittens, this was more challenging than it sounds. The snow blanketed evergreens were no different than on the way up, but our worlds were.