He Proposed to a Proposal Planner

He Proposed to a Proposal Planner!

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Elie & Aaron

How They Met

It was spring of 2013 and I was up at school studying neuro anatomy with Sarah Nedde and Dan Breazeale (aka My Best Man). We were quizzing each other with our colored pictures of the human brain, or really Sarah’s colored pictures of the human brain, because let’s face it, Dan and I don’t color. So we were quizzing each other, when Sarah looked up and decided to invite the two of us to a house warming party of a girl in her bible study group from church. Dan and I, looking at each other, knowing that neither one of us had a life outside of Netflix, accepted the invitation. We finished our little study session and left the school en route to the house warming party.

The three of us arrive to the party fashionably early. It’s us and about three other people. One of those three people was Elie, who also arrived fashionably early. Now I won’t say it was love at first sight or anything, but I did definitely think to myself, “This girl’s pretty cute”. As the night went on, she continued to hang out with us three. We even invited her along to see a movie with us that we were planning on seeing after the party. She agreed, and by this point, I was pretty excited that she would be going along with us. We went to the movie, and I was really hoping to sit next to her during the movie, but as luck would have, Dan ended up sitting next to her. I was kinda bummed about that. After the movie, we all said our goodbyes and went home. The next morning I Facebook friend requested her. Then invited her to hang out with our little group of friends continuously until she became a permanent fixture.

The Proposal Planning

I don’t think I was nervous about her being a Yes Girl, but I was nervous. I was more nervous about getting everything planned and set up on time, because I have a tendency to wait until the last minute on things. I knew the proposal was going to be special and personal to her, so her being a Yes Girl didn’t really get to me.

I knew of some things that she liked and wanted. I knew that she loves flowers, but especially peonies and hydrangeas. I knew that having her 2 best friends there was going to be special, and I knew that she was going to want a photographer to capture the whole thing. But, other than that, Heather, Elie’s boss, really came up with the rest of the décor, and Hannah, Elie’s best friend, came up with idea of having everyone tell her a little something sweet as she walked down to me.

I had two main goals for the proposal. 1. I wanted it to be special and 2. I wanted her to be completely surprised. This second goal, I knew, was going to be the tricky part, because Elie, aside from the fact that she’s a Yes Girl, has been looking around every corner for the past few weeks and expecting to run into her own proposal. This is why I really liked the idea of proposing around her friend’s bachelorette party, because it would be shrouded within this other event.

There was one hiccup during the planning process, due to the fact that I waited until the last minute to start planning. Elie and I were planning on going up to Oklahoma from Dallas together on Thursday, but the florist, who is in Dallas (I selected her because she’s Elie’s favorite florist), wasn’t going to have the arrangements finished until Saturday morning, the day of the proposal. So, I had two options: I could either find someone who was available to bring the flowers up on Saturday, which I didn’t. Or, I could drive them up myself. This would require me to come up with a reason for me to stay behind for the weekend. That’s when I came up with “The Interview”. I had just graduated from physical therapy school and have been applying for jobs, so I told her that I had been offered an interview for Saturday, that this was the earliest that they could get me in, and the hiring manager was going to be out on vacation all of next week, so I couldn’t reschedule it for later. Elie bought it. It was a job interview, a legitimate reason to miss out on the weekend.

Now I had two extra days of planning and the availability to pick up all of the flowers. On Saturday, the day of the proposal, I had to borrow my mom’s Ford Explorer, because these flower arrangements were massive, especially the chandelier that was made of flowers. This thing weighed about 35 pounds and had to be hung up in the back of the Explorer, because if it laid on any surface for too long, it would kill the flowers. So, I got the flowers and the canvas (I’ll tell you about the canvas later), and start heading up to Oklahoma at about 9:00 a.m. I got to Hannah’s Parent’s house (the site of the proposal) at about noon and met Heath, Hannah’s husband, and Cooper, Caroline’s fiancé. Now it’s up to 3 dudes to set up a Yes Girls caliber proposal set. The good news is, we have about four and half hours to pull it off.

The Proposal

So here is the “The Plan”. I chose Hannah’s parent’s house for the proposal for a few reasons: It wouldn’t rouse her suspicion. She had been staying at their house all weekend, so for them to show up at the house in the evening would be very common. Another reason is they have a beautiful backyard, a perfect place for a proposal. It’s a green, wooded area with plenty of trees. Under the trees, we set up a little teepee/tent with a table draped with lace next to it. On the table was framed Bible verse, a baseball glove and a baseball with a written note on the ball. The note read, “You may have said, um yeah sure, but to me, that was just as good as, hell yes”. This was a little inside joke from our first date. We had known each other for awhile before we started dating, and when I finally asked her out, she reluctantly said “Um yeah sure”, instead of yes. Above the tent, hung the flower chandelier, and we set up tons of other flowers all over the site of the proposal. Behind the tent and table, we had market lights hanging between trees, and leading up to the tent and table, we had lit candles inside of mason jars and lanterns.

I was to be standing right in front of the tent waiting for her. When she arrived at 5:00 pm, with Hannah and Caroline, they walked her through the house to the backyard and gave her a bouquet of peonies. Once she was in the backyard her friends and family (we had her mom Skyped in from Arizona) all lined up waiting to each tell her a little something sweet as she walked down to the area where I proposed. When she got down to the tented area, next to me, on a bench was a giant canvas where a calligrapher had copied a letter I wrote. The letter was from me to Elie’s deceased father, asking his permission to marry his daughter. After the letter, I went into my proposal speech, got down on one knee, and did the deed with videographers and a photographer catching every single moment. Goal number one to make it special…Check. Goal number two to surprise the Yes Girl…Check, Check, Check. She had no idea.

The Engagement Ring

Well, on Elie’s birthday last year, I surprised her with going ring shopping, just to let her try on some things and get an idea of what she liked and didn’t like. So when the time came for me to actually buy one, I had an idea of what I wanted to get her, but to my surprise, and hers, the ring I ended up getting was a little different than the one’s she was trying on at her birthday. I took some ideas that we had talked about, and added some other things that neither one of us talked about. But, the ring that I decided on was one that I found pretty early in the shopping process, and never liked anything else as much. When you know, you know. I didn’t ask for anyone’s help for finding the ring. This was something that I wanted to do on my own. I didn’t want anyone else’s opinions to crowd what I already knew about what Elie likes.

I purchased the ring at The Diamond Doctor in Dallas, TX, which I highly recommend to everyone. The designer is Jeff Cooper. I was drawn to Jeff Cooper because he had a good selection of solitaire ring designs, which Elie likes. His designs are also very “classy” looking. They don’t look too flashy. They’re very traditional, with very subtle, but amazing detail. I think that’s why I was so drawn to the ring.

Watch the video here: