By: Sarah Madden, Senior Writer
“Apparently, I didn’t even let him finish the question before I said yes!”
Senior Catherine Eason started dating Jack Pateracki, her fiancé, in October 2013. This August, they were engaged while on a weekend trip to Charleston. Eason says she is a “major planner” and basically knew how and when she would get engaged:
“We designed the ring together, and I knew he planned a trip to Charleston for us, but I didn’t know what we were doing in Charleston, where we were staying or anything like that.”
Eason says that she and Pateracki will be married in March of 2017 in Charleston and that she hopes this length of engagement will give her time to focus on finishing school before planning the wedding without being stressed.
While Eason’s engagement occurred over the summer, several Wofford students have accepted proposals in the past few months. One of these proposals happened at this year’s homecoming football game against Chattanooga, when senior cheerleader Ashlyn Keightley was surprised on her birthday by boyfriend Logan Miller’s proposal on the field during the first half of the game.
“Our coach asked us all to form a semicircle and face the scoreboard, and I was surprised because the screen suddenly said ‘Happy Birthday Ashlyn’ which I thought was so sweet. Then one of the cheerleaders said I should turn around and get a picture with the scoreboard in the background. [When] I turned around Logan was standing there,” she says. “I was so shocked to see him that I threw my poms on the ground. Then he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, which just blew me away. I could hardly catch my breath to say ‘YES!’ I just kept nodding my head up and down. It was the greatest surprise ever!”
Keightley says that she and Miller met in February of 2014 while they were both studying abroad in Freiburg, Germany.
“We were both in the IES program and in the same German language class. We began dating on April 4, 2014, so we have now been together for a little over a year and a half. [When he surprised me], I had no idea he was even in the state – he’s from Nebraska, went to school at Pomona College in California, and now lives and works in Dallas, Texas.”
The wedding will be in May of 2016 in Nashville, TN, and Keightley says that while she doesn’t remember much of the game, she’ll never forget the proposal:
“The rest of the game is somewhat of a blur because I was so drunk on happiness. It was such a beautiful euphoric moment that the memory makes me float!”
Senior Molly Case became engaged in August to her boyfriend of four and a half years, Gritton Culbertson, while at his family’s barbeque: “My parents, grandmother and most of his family were there. It was a hot day… but Gritton insisted that we go outside to play with our dog and his two year-old nephew. We were playing in the fields… throwing the ball around with the dog.”
Case says that Culbertson sat down to pet the dog, then asked Case to help him stand up again.
“When I went to help him up he got down on one knee… I said yes of course. I then realized all of our families were on the front porch watching the whole thing!”
Case and Culbertson plan to be married in October of next year.
Sophomore Conner Wood says that she and fiancé Tyler Crawford also dated for four years before getting engaged in late October. The proposal happened at Table Rock State Park, where they hiked with their husky to a waterfall so they could have a picnic. Once they reached the waterfall, Wood says, she took the dog to get a drink from the waterfall and then climbed back up to where Crawford was waiting.
“[Tyler] told me to adjust the dog collar so he could take a picture of us. I did, and that is when I saw a tag on his collar that said, ‘Will you marry my daddy?’ I stood up, Tyler took my hand, and said the most amazing, sweetest things. Then, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him! He had a photographer there hiding to take pictures of everything, too. It was wonderful.”
Wood says that she wants to get married after she graduates in 2018, preferably in November on their anniversary.
Both Lauren Lewitt and Jacob Balmer are seniors at Wofford, and they have been together for five years. This fall break, like most before, they traveled to Lewitt’s grandparents’ mountain property in Boone, North Carolina.
“There is nothing within a 25 minute radius but Christmas tree farms, wooded trails and beautiful landscapes,” says Lewitt. “[What we call] ‘the farm’ has long been a special place for my family, and in the years that Jacob and I have dated, it has become a place we love to visit together, too.”
Lewitt says that when they left campus for the farm, Balmer was in a hurry to beat poor weather and nightfall – “both of which would have ruined his plans. We didn’t stop for coffee, snacks or shopping along the way.”
Once on the property, they took a ride through the wooded trails near the house, says Lewitt, and they stopped on a ridge that overlooks the surround area.
“This spot is one we have visited many times before to take photos. Jacob suggested we set up the self-timer on the camera to take a few pictures because the leaves had begun to change it was especially pretty that day. Clueless, I agreed and we took a few. He looked at them, deemed them unsatisfactory and set up the camera again to take a few more. This time, he dropped down on one knee and proposed.”
Balmer says that he had a ring custom-made in Spartanburg and that Lewitt’s grandparents contributed the metal from her grandmother’s original wedding ring.
“This made [it] more special than I could have possibly originally hoped for. I knew the best place I could possibly propose would be her grandparents’ mountain house.”
Balmer says that he knew he wanted to marry Lewitt after just one year of dating, but the two will not set a date for a while – Lewitt says that ideally they will be engaged for one year, and a summer 2017 wedding is likely.
While none of these Terriers will tie the knot before graduation, seniors Mace and Grayson Sally were married last May and are spending their last year in college as a married couple. According to Mace, the two were dating for a year and a half before getting engaged.
“It is awesome to be married college. You always have someone on your ‘team’ supporting and encouraging you. Grayson is my best friend so spending an extra year being married to him is the best thing.”
Erin and John Prevost, ’15, were dating for about a year before they got engaged at the first home football game of the year September of their junior year. They got married the June before their senior year, and Erin says that living off campus proved to be difficult, but worth it:
“It was crazy to be married in college… Waking up extra early to make it to cheer practice or to ROTC was not fun and staying late for labs when I knew I had to go home and make dinner afterwards was a challenge,” she says. “We chose to get married during college although we knew of the hardships and trials it could bring while juggling a marriage and school. We have been greatly rewarded in so many aspects of our lives just by doing life together! Through this, John and I were able to push each other to be better students, friends, and spouses.”
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