“Our relationship was a bit unconventional - our parents set us up. My mum had been trying to get me to contact Sumaiyah for ages; I’d been doing the whole ‘yes, yes, I will!’ thing. When I eventually did text her, I asked her if she wanted to meet up in London. She was keen to do an activity rather than just dinner, so I suggested we go to clueQuest - I’d been there before for a birthday. And after that first date, we kept going from strength to strength. And I decided I was going to jump into it, I was going to propose.
I managed to get a ring, and then I sent a message to clueQuest. A friend of mine had found a link on their website and I realised that it was where we’d had our first date, so it was fate! I was so far away that I couldn’t just pop in, so I was speaking to Georgie, the person in charge of special event games, over email for weeks! And she managed to get the drink that we wanted too, ‘cause Sumaiyah and I don’t drink alcohol.
I was absolutely panicking on the day - my heart was through the roof as it got closer and closer. But Georgie has said that she was gonna help me out, make sure we escaped the room in time!
In the actual escape room, my head just wasn’t working. My bag had the ring in it, and I was worried Sumaiyah would find out, but she didn’t expect a thing. Georgie and I had hidden a locked wooden box with pictures of Sumaiyah and me in it. And when Sumaiyah found it, we were only halfway through the game - she kept picking it up and going ‘oh, we need to open this!’ and I was, like, ‘oh yeah, maybe!’.
Then at the end she found the key, and opened the box, and when she did I got down on one knee. There were a few seconds of her processing what was happening, then she started screaming! In the video of the proposal she’s jumping up and down. Once she’d said yes, Georgie came in with the drinks, and we went to a room that had been prepared for us, with snacks.
Proposing like that, it’s not a thing in our culture - it’s more of a formal thing. It’s like the joining of two families. So Sumaiyah never expected it - but I knew that’s what she would like. It’s a mix of East and West. I even managed to get the ring she wanted without her noticing. So yeah, it all came together.’
We’re so glad that Khaled and Sumaiyah chose clueQuest to make such a wonderful memory. We hope their lives together are as filled with adventure as our escape rooms! If you're interested in having a proposal at clueQuest, you can contact us at escape@cluequest.co.uk