The special proposal was inspired by their tradition of leaving notes for each other every morning, since their time is limited during the work week.
A special proposal takes time to plan, but this Chicago man's elaborate surprise was a year in the making.
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Josh Schmitz, 29, has known for quite a while that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with his girlfriend of one year, Danielle Roesch.
But instead of proposing right then and there, Schmitz came up with an elaborate plan that would take 365 days to conduct, to make it all the more special.
"I was always so dead-set on my plan," Schmitz told InsideEdition.com.
He said he was inspired by their tradition of leaving each other notes.
He works as a heavy equipment mechanic and because he often wakes up earlier than Roesch, "every morning on a scratch piece of paper, I'll write a note so she'll have something to wake up to."
In a video for his proposal, he wanted to incorporate that same idea, so each day since August 19 of last year — the date that represented a combination of their anniversary and their birthdates — he wrote a simple message on a white board and recorded a brief video, documenting each day of their lives together.
"The first month was pretty exciting stuff. I thought, 'How am I going to be able to keep this a secret from her?'" Schmitz recalled. "It wasn't that far in that I actually told one of her best friends, which could have easily been a big mistake."
Save for a single slip up in the following 365 days, Schmitz said Roesch didn't have a clue of his plan.
Finally, exactly a year after the elaborate set up, Schmitz and some friends came up with the idea to invite her to a made up party for the big day. The invitation stated specifically that the dress code was cocktail attire.
Last Friday, Schmitz arrived at the location by the lake where all her friends and family surprised her. In the middle was a mobile billboard where the 8-minute compilation of every day of their lives played.
After the video played through, her friends escorted her to a spot on the lake, where Schmitz was waiting on one knee, armed with that same whiteboard featured in each of the videos.
On the whiteboard, he wrote two words, "Yes" and "Maybe" with a checkbox next to each option.
Instead of an erasable marker that he had been using to write messages on the board for the past year, he handed her a permanent marker, with which she checked off, "Yes."
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