As soon as Taylor Swift announced she was bringing her Eras Tour to Australia, Kesh knew that she had to propose to girlfriend Jules at one of the concerts.
Jules, 18, has been a massive Swiftie for years and Kesh, also 18, knew there was no better place to pop the question – but they had to get tickets first.
“I really wanted to propose to Jules at a Taylor Swift concert and we didn’t have two tickets, but I was like, ‘this needs to happen’,” Kesh tells 9honey.
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The first ticket drops were mayhem and the Darwin couple missed out on seats, so like millions of Australians they turned to Facebook Marketplace.
That’s where Kesh found a woman claiming to be reselling two tickets to one of Swift’s Melbourne shows for $400.
“I thought I could trust her. She sent me a video of her face, we had her licence. She swore on her kids’ lives,” she says.
The seller asked Kesh to send the cash via a payment app and Kesh agreed, as a quick Google showed it was a legitimate and authorised financial institution.
Unfortunately, the seller wasn’t legitimate.
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Kesh and Jules only realised they’d been scammed after handing over $400. They were unable to get their money back.
“Why would you emotionally manipulate someone like that?” Kesh fumes.
Suddenly her Eras Tour proposal plans were circling the drain.
Desperate to secure tickets, she scoured resale sites until she found another Aussie offering two H Reserve tickets, which retail for less than $100, for five times the original price.
“He was telling me that he got an offer from someone for $500 and I knew I had to act fast … so we ended up paying $550 for two H Reserve tickets,” Kesh says.
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Tickets in hand, they jetted to Melbourne for Swift’s very first Eras Tour show Down Under on February 16.
A nervous Kesh stashed the ring box under half an uneaten Subway sandwich in her bag as they headed to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
Before going inside she made an excuse about throwing out the sandwich, snuck away and moved the ring to her pocket.
Then Swift took to the stage, the music swelled and Kesh got ready to pop the question.
“I was very nervous going into it. I was like, ‘Is this it? Is this the lyric?'” she says.
Right before the big moment she told Jules she was going to ask surrounding concertgoers to snap a photo of them using a note typed on her phone. It was a lie.
“I had two notes, that was the fake note. The real note that I was showing people actually said, ‘I’m going to propose to my girlfriend. Can you help us film?'” Kesh reveals.
Everyone was ready when the opening notes of Swift’s 2008 hit Love Story played; everyone except Jules, who had no clue what was about to happen.
As Swift belted the line, ‘He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring’, Kesh did just that.
At first, Jules didn’t believe the proposal was real.
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“She would do this thing where she jokingly got down on one knee in public, so I thought she was doing that again,” Jules says.
Then she saw the ring in Kesh’s hand.
“You hear me scream in the video. I was like, ‘Oh my god, is this happening?'” she says.
“I was shaking, I almost fell over and forgot to say yes until Taylor Swift said ‘yes’ in the song. I was just watching Kesh sing at me and I was like, ‘Wait, I need to say yes!'”
The crowd around them cheers as Kesh finally put the ring on Jules’ finger.
“Jules was just so happy and in that moment, I knew that it was going to work out and that every step I took to make sure it happened was all worth it,” Kesh says.
Jules adds: “I’m really grateful that I have someone who was willing to put in that much effort.”
The rest of the show felt like a dream and Jules was still on cloud nine the next morning when she spotted her own face while scrolling on TikTok.
Another concertgoer had filmed their engagement and posted it online, where it had already racked up tens of thousands of likes. Jules was floored by the positive response.
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https://www.instagram.com/p/C3bUrWfyAbb/
The clip has since been watched over 1.6 million times with hundreds of thousands of Swift fans cheering the couple on in the comments.
The support means so much to the couple, who know firsthand how alienating it can be to be openly queer, especially in their home city of Darwin.
“It’s very difficult to be brave sometimes, especially as an openly queer couple,” Kesh says.
“To be able to declare my love in a way that was so public, open and just carefree, it was a really exhilarating feeling.”
They never expected their engagement to go viral but hope the footage empowers other queer Aussies.
Kesh’s advice to anyone planning a proposal at one of Swift’s Sydney shows is to learn all the lyrics ahead of time.
And yes, there will definitely be a touch of Taylor Swift on their wedding day.
Kesh and Jules both love the song Timeless, which they say perfectly encompasses their romance, so there’s no doubt it and Love Story will be on the wedding playlist.