Gretchen and Matthew Emrich Engagement Announcement
Gretchen Redding, daughter of Michael and Lavone Redding of Barnesville MN, has become engaged to Matthew Emrich, son of Frank and Wendy Emrich of Pacific WA.
Saturday, June 29th 2019
Proposal
Over the next year, Matt and I have continued to travel in that white Chevy Cargo camping van. We have traveled to many states, national parks, and national forest on the west side of the country. In June we embarked on another one of our two week long trips in our 'vansion'. This trip we didn't have any set plans of where and when we needed to be somewhere. We wanted to be able to decide day by day on what we wanted to do. We first decided to drive through Yellow Stone, checking off another National Park from out list. From there, we decided we were ready for the warm weather of California. During this long drive, I took a nap (like always). When I woke up, Matt said in 3 days we will be summiting Mt. Whitney. He had gotten last minute permits online while I was sleeping. I was scared for this was to be the longest and hardest hike of my life thus far. It would be a 22 mile hike in one day, and greater than 6,000ft elevation gain to the summit of 14,502 feet!! This is the highest mountain in the lower 48 states. He encouraged me that we must do this and that we will both get to the top no matter what it takes. 3 days later, we wake up at 0230am after camping at 8,000ft elevation to begin our hike up the mountain. There are many memories made on this hike, but we will never forget the 97 switch backs to gain the majority of the elevation. But decpite remembering that, we will also remember what happened on the summit. Matt had asked some random guy at the top to take a picture of us holding the summit sign, during this mini photo op, matt began to say some sweet nothings to me and got down on one knee. He pulled out the typical handful of wild flowers he picks for me on our hikes, but this time there was a shinny rose gold engagement ring around the flowers. How could I say no? There was a lack of oxygen flowing to my brain at this elevation! This will forever be my favorite hike, but I have no intentions of hiking that mountain again!
photos by Jessica Deering Phototgraphy
How They Met
Matt and I met through work. He began to give me gruff while dropping off patients in the ER about ignoring him in public. He claims to have seen me outside of work, states he said “Hi Gretchen”. Matt claims that I looked right at him and then walked away. I, at this time, had no idea what his name even was. The medics don't have name tags on, like the hospital staff does. I then learned what his name was, and made an effort to say hi to him the next time I saw him outside of work. After a few months of knowing each other and two weeks in to “seeing each other” Matt asked if I wanted to go on a road trip through Utah. I am always looking for new adventures and agreed to tag along. We proceeded to live out of a white Chevy Cargo van for a little over a week in the desert. We figured if we didn't want to kill each other after that, maybe this would work.
