On Wednesday May 2nd, Miranda and I spent the day in Tyler. I had an all day interview at Grace Community Church and she spent the day with my sister and nephews.
The plan from the beginning was to propose at my farm in the pasture that I knew she wanted to get married in. The key components for me was that it was simple, intimate, romantic and a complete surprise to Miranda.
The hard part was to get her dressed up and at the farm.
For several weeks I had planned a fake dinner with good friends Mike and Tamara Mcguire for that night. I needed a reason for her to get dressed up and a dinner date was the most obvious choice. On our way to dinner Mike and Tamara had to “bail” on us. Miranda completely fell for it. Earlier that day I had Cole (another good friend) give me a call with a made up story that he and Holly were going to be in Palestine that night and that we should get together. Since we had our “dinner plans” with Mike and Tamara – we weren’t going to be able to make that happen.
Well with Mike and Tamara canceling on us, Miranda suggested we call Cole and Holly and see if would could still do dinner in Palestine in a couple hours. This is exactly what I was hoping for. So off to Palestine we headed.
My farm is on the way to Palestine from Tyler and I just “needed” to make a stop to check my game cameras (cameras that are mounted to trees and on motion sensors to log animal activity in the woods). After stopping at the cabin to get freshly charged batteries I suggested we walk to the game camera since we had time.
— Looking back Miranda will say that for a split second she thought that this could be it – but she quickly discarded it since we had had dinner plans. She did look at my pants pocket for a ring box but it was hidden from her sight thankfully —
We took a walk through a knee high pasture and as we got underneath a big tall oak tree I took both hands and began to tell her how much I love her. At that point I got down on one knee and asked if she would marry me. She thankfully said Yes.
Little did she know I had two of my best friends Sara & Rocky Garza hiding in the bushes taking pictures. After a minute they came out and we all hugged and took some more pictures. My sister was also there and a huge part of the day running smoothly. She had also made a picnic dinner for us. After everyone left we had dinner underneath that tree then headed home to Palestine. When we arrived at my parents house, one of Miranda’s close friends from college was there waiting to celebrate.
