I had this idea back in high school to make a book out of the story of the girl who I was going to propose to and I’s story. About a year ago, I started working on this book. Within the past few months, I buckled down and really worked on making it look more of a surprise than giving her the book and her knowing it was coming the entirety of looking through the book.

I decided I’d pretend like it was a gift from my parents to me for my birthday and the first part of the story would be my story. Then when I met Hannah, it’d quickly become our story together leading up to that night we got engaged. Because of the purpose of the book, it couldn’t be long so I had to abridge my story and our story down to 20 pages, complete with pictures (provided by Morgan Blake, although she didn’t know what they were being used for).

Once I got her dad’s blessing, the ring and the book, it’d be all ready to go. The more I thought about waiting until my birthday on Wednesday, I realized it might be easier to do it over the weekend.

I got back in town last night from Baton Rouge at about 10. Since she’d been driving my car some while I was gone, I knew I needed to take her home. I also knew the book had come in over my trip and was sitting in the packaging at my house. Once we got to my house, I grabbed the ring from the best hiding place ever (girls never look in guitar pedal boxes in your studio closet!). I started asking her if she sent the package and acted like I didn’t know what it was. We opened it up and chalked the mystery gift to being a gift from my parents…after all, it was a story about my life. She took the bait and wanted to take turns reading each page through it (I knew there was a risk in her wanting to flip through the book, but I also knew she’d want to read through it together). When the book turned to being about us and our relationship together, she still didn’t know what was up! The book turns again and blatantly says that this book isn’t about Nathan, it’s about us. She kept asking, “Wait…what is this?!”, so I had to read the rest. This is when I could really feel my heart pouding in my chest even though I hadn’t been nervous besides fumbling over a few words while reading. Then it talked about how special our love story was and said that it was time for us to turn the next page in our storybook. This is when I got down on my knee and pulled the ring out.

She immediately started crying and buried her head in my shoulder. Once I got her to look at me, I told her how I felt. I didn’t rehearse it and still don’t know what I really said…it was completely from the heart. I finally asked her if she’d marry me and she said, “Yes!” and jumped on me! After about a good 15-20 seconds of hugging it out, I said, “Don’t you want to see the ring?” We laughed and I put it on her finger.

It was a really special time for us. Thanks for all the love, kind words and support!