This is the actual picture of Alex proposing. Not quite as carefully curated as some of the others we've shared, but the most authentic.
The location is real, though, and breathtaking. Fie has been talking about taking photos of Kelingking Beach for at least a year. We kept pushing it off as Nusa Penida is a tough place to visit for only 2 days (a typical weekend). We finally had the excuse to visit when our friends Ajay and Divya came to Bali. Or did we?
Alex's Story:
I had been trying to organize the proposal in secret. Fie and I have a mutual friend who is a fantastic photographer. I coordinated with him to head to Kelingking beach a day early to scope it out, as I had never been there before. Unbeknownst to Fie, I had also coopted Ajay to take drone shots of us, after the actual proposal (as I wanted it to be private and intimate).
Saturday morning came around, and it was unseasonably cold in Penida. Fie was very reluctant to get out of bed. As the minutes slipped away, I began to sweat. I tried to move her along the best I could. The drive to the beach was about 30 minutes by motorbike. On the way there, every time I saw a sign for Kelingking beach, my heart skipped a beat as my nervousness seized in my stomach.
When we arrived, it was still early, not too crowded. I was so nervous that, even after all the photographer's instruction, I still went to the wrong place! But in the end it was perfect. I was able to stammer out my proposal in private.
The photographer ran up the hill and captured a bunch of photos (while running). Fie got so distracted that she stopped listening and never gave me an answer. Eventually she did say "Yes!" But only after we had both collected ourselves. We then met the others to stage the 'proposal at Kelingking' pictures and the drone video.
Shooting the cover video for our website, the drone made a 360 degree arc around us, after completing some fly over shots. Unfortunately, the drone clipped some bushes as it completed it's rotation (just after the video ends). I was so determined to get the great footage that I scaled down the cliff side to recover the drone - despite Fie's shouts of displeasure and fear. We got it back without a scratch. Fie almost lost her new fiance in the first hour of our new status!
All in all, it was a fantastic day.