Jason Tartick Details Setbacks He Faced in Planning Proposal to Kaitlyn Bristowe: A 'Nightmare'

Kaitlyn Bristowe and Jason Tartick announced their engagement in May

Jason Tartick put a lot of effort into planning how he would propose to now-fiancée Kaitlyn Bristowe — but it didn't all go as he imagined.

On Thursday's episode of the Click Bait with Bachelor Nation podcast, Tartick revealed that he "knew a while ago" that he wanted to marry the former Bachelorette lead. However, leading up to the moment when he finally popped the question earlier this year, Tartick experienced numerous setbacks.

"The problem is is there's so many moving parts in our lives right now. And to me, the biggest part of the engagement, no matter what, wasn't the thrills or the money or any of this stuff behind like, what I would do. It's more about, literally, her friends and family," Tartick, 32, explained.

"So, for so long, [we're going], 'How can we figure this out? How can we get her family?' Then, I have a plan. Then, COVID hits. Then, [it's like] what the hell are we going to do, right?" he continued. "Then the summer of 2020, if you remember, kind of COVID pulled back a little bit. So I thought we had a good plan in place and then boom, Dancing with the Stars hit and then Kaitlyn's in Canada [and it] totally shut down. So the planning process was an absolute nightmare of trying to figure out what I could do, but then it got to a point like, you can't let the uncontrollables control your entire life. So [I] just had to make something work."

As they were getting ready to travel to visit Bristowe's parents in Mexico this past spring, Tartick said he was "inches" away from being able to pull off the proposal on the trip.

However, to Tartick's dismay, he hit another snag seven days before the trip.

"I ran into all these border issues actually bringing the ring over," he recalled. "So I had to detour the whole plan, because I was going to do it in Mexico with her mom and [I] had this whole setup. I realized I couldn't bring this over. If I bring it over as like, my asset, it's considered an asset of mine. At the value of what the ring is, I would have to totally disclose it and then show receipts. And I'm traveling with Kaitlyn, so how could I? And if I did do that and it got sniped, it would have been a whole production."

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Following another failed attempt, Tartick recalled "scrambling" to figure out his plan of action and ended up "venting" to his mother about the rocky journey.

Thanks to his mom, Tartick got his proposal plan back on track.

"My mom, actually, was a big part of helping me come up with the creative [aspect of the proposal]," he said of the moment, which ended up happening two days before they went to Mexico. "She was like, 'You know, you guys met on the podcast.' I was like, 'Ah!' So I proposed to her on the podcast. She had no idea!"

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Bristowe, 36, and Tartick met in 2018 while recording her Off the Vine podcast. They began dating the following year and later announced their engagement in May.

Tartick recently told PEOPLE that the couple's wedding planning is underway. "We are full speed ahead, which is so exciting," he said. "And we're both so excited about the next steps of our lives."

Bristowe, for her part, said on the Bachelor Happy Hour podcast in June that she "won't be surprised if she's pregnant for the wedding." She added, "I don't want to be, but that's how anxious I am."