Guo Jie had been planning this Switzerland trip for months. He was "working late" while secretly putting together a proposal plan. Every detail, every backup plan, every scenario, except one. When we got to Switzerland, it was gloomy. The day before the proposal, it rained. And rained. And rained. Guo Jie is not religious at all, but that week, he prayed to every god he knew.
Yu Zon, blissfully unaware, was actually loving the rain. On a train past a lake the day before, she'd turned to Guo Jie: "Don't you think the rain adds an extra layer to the scenery?" He smiled. He did not think so, absolutely not.
Guo Jie bought a tripod for this trip and he took a lot of nice photos, rain or sun. (The tripod is linked to the next part of the story...)
29th May 2026. The morning broke clear. He told her, very casually, not to wear the striking blue dress she had picked out the day before. "The white one will look better against the mountain." She thought that didn't make sense since the Matterhorn was going to be covered in snow and look white too... but she decided to go with it as the blue dress was slightly harder to hike in anyway.
We headed to Zermatt. The sun had brought everyone out, and the train up to see the Matterhorn was packed. We almost didn't make it on, but of course, only one of us was nervous about that.
At the second stop, only two other people got off. Guo Jie said, "We get off here."
Yu Zon, ever the smartypants: "We shouldn't get off, what if we can't get on the next train?"
Uh oh. Guo Jie was sweating thanks to her critical thinking. But all he could say was: "Just trust me. I did my research. It's nice up there."
So we got off. And walked up the hill. And spotted a marmot along the way, because of course we did.
At the top: a vast, green field with the Matterhorn so close and so clear it didn't look real. Yu Zon immediately wanted to walk over to where three people with massive DSLRs were standing. "They clearly know what they're doing." Guo Jie asked her to keep walking forward instead.
"The mountain is so big, why do I need to take 26 steps forward?"
Guo Jie pulled out the very same tripod he'd been using to take pics over the last few days, asked for Yu Zon's phone, and set it up like he was framing a couples' photo. Totally normal... (By day six of being photographed against every conceivable backdrop, Yu Zon had stopped paying attention to the tripod entirely. Which was the whole point.)
But when he brought the phone back, it wasn't a camera. It was a video. A montage of our years together.
Yu Zon cried. A lot.
He knelt down. He asked the question.
She said yes.
"It felt like the whole world faded away. Just us and the mountain."
What Yu Zon didn't know: Guo Jie had been emailing Katherina, a photographer based in Zermatt, for months. Location, timing, angles, all coordinated. She'd been hiding in the trees about 20 metres away the whole time.
We held each other for a long time. Then Guo Jie waved Katherina out from the trees, and we celebrated with an engagement shoot on that beautiful green field, the Matterhorn watching over us. And our special pet Fumo was there too.
We sat in the field for two hours, calling every parent and best friend we had. Forgot all about lunch. Guo Jie's scalp got sunburnt (we only found out the next day). We got back on the train and rode all the way to the top, where the Matterhorn looked impossible up close. Strangers spotted Yu Zon's bouquet and stopped to congratulate us. By the time we got back to the hotel, the day still didn't feel real. We were so happy we went to celebrate with a spa treatment in the hotel!
That green field? It's where we took the photo you see on our landing page.