How We Met: Summer and I met on a soccer team with a group of people from a church group we had spent time with. Shortly after we met, we quickly hit it off. She had known about my history with cancer and didn’t seem to care at all, which meant a lot to me. Not too long into our relationship, I was diagnosed a second time. The way she supported and still supports me made me sure beyond a doubt, on top of all the other amazing things about her, that I would be lucky and blessed to have her as my wife.
How He Asked: When it came time to ask, I wanted it to be a big surprise. I had a lot of medical bills and she knew I didn’t have much money, but I had been putting money away secretly for a ring for her. Throughout our relationship, Summer regularly begged me to just get her a fake ring or use a piece of string just so we could marry each other. She expects nothing in return for anything she does.
However, Summer is a wedding photographer and her job is telling people’s love stories through her pictures. She does such a good job that I wanted her to have a ring and a story that she could be proud of. I wanted her to smile every time she took a picture of a ring knowing she had the perfect ring on her finger and the perfect story behind it.
Once I had placed the order for her ring, we had found out that her dog Lexi had cancer. Summer had many difficult moments growing up and often times Lexi was the only thing she had to turn to. Her dog meant the world to her. I knew it would be important to include Lexi in the proposal but feared she wouldn’t make it in time, so I got the jewelry box and set up a photo shoot with Lexi asking her for permission to marry Summer and taking pictures with the ring box and Lexi. Shortly after, Lexi passed away. I then wrote our story out and made a picture book, and at the end of the book I wrote that there was one person who was particularly excited to see us get married and that was Lexi, and included the pictures we had taken.
Since Summer is a photographer, I wanted to make sure the proposal was very well documented through photographs as well.
I had our photographer, Meredith Washburn, meet us out at a beautiful historic mansion and we set a scene for the proposal.
Summer had a path to follow, read through the book, and then met me in the garden where I asked for her hand.
She had absolutely no idea that the proposal was coming, and the pictures of Lexi in particular meant the world to her. It couldn’t have been more perfect and of course, she said yes!
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