The day I proposed

During our family vacation of 2013, I had been secretly been planing to ask my then girlfriend to marry me. It started much earlier in the year, when I drove to her parents house and asked her father Larry, “Sir, with your permission, I would like to ask for your daughters hand in marriage. I understand she has two small boys and I fully accept them as a package.” Larry looked me in the eyes and said, “if you can promise me you won’t hurt those boys and my daughter, you treat them right, I’ll give you my blessing.” With a slight smile, I nodded my head and said “challenge accepted, thank you!” From that very moment I began planning the proposal, from simple all the way to elaborate. Now for those of you who don’t know my wife, Becke is a helpless romantic, she loves all that mushy titanic sad love story non sense. So I used that to my advantage. Becke loves the beach, so I planned on making a message in a bottle on the beach, and taking her for a walk and just finding it, but it proved much harder to plan with our work schedule and getting it in place prior to us getting there. Inside of it would have been a note that said “Becke, will you accept me, and grant me the honor to call you my wife?” But I scratched that idea and decided to do it during vacation in the mountains of Gatlinburg, TN. The beach idea was my original, but the one I did made more sense as Becke absolutely loves the Titanic. See in Pigeon Forge, TN there is a museum and it’s the Titanic museum. There is only two in the world, the other is Branson,Mo. The museum is shaped like the front half to scale of the Titanic hitting an iceberg. Inside is a full scale, hand made replica of the infamous grand staircase made from the same lumber and original blueprints.

So we head out on our vacation, make the 8.5 hour drive to Gatlinburg, and we get to our favorite place, Baskins Creek. Beautiful place to stay if you’re ever in the area, we highly recommend it. You park your car in a secure area, and can walk everywhere else in town. Plus whirlpool bathtub, pool, and it’s simply amazing. We started our trip like any other and ate dinner at Hard Rock Cafe (we collect the pins as we visit each year and new locations, so far as of May 2016, we have been to 8 locations in 2 different countries). The rest of this week long visit was going to be amazing, I was super excited, because nothing but the location was planned. So we visit Obergatlinburg via the Sky tram, we did the mini space needle, the sky lift, arcade, Hollywood wax museum, The Old Mill (another amazing restaurant).

So it’s day two, and the weather finally has a decent break from rain and fog. I recommend we go to the Titanic Museum (I owe her the visit as the first time we came to G’burg, I refused to go as we went for a car club event), and she was super happy. We pull up and we get our tickets which look like boarding tickets and have a story on the backside of an actual passenger. As you do the museum tour you have to look for clues related to your passenger and at the end of the tour, you’ll learn the fate and full story of the person you got. Becke got Dorothy Gibson (the actual person Kate Winslet’s character was based on in the movie Titanic), and I got James Hyland, I was a simple 3rd class crew member. Luckily, both of our passengers lived.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

So we got our boarding passes, and all staff dress to the era, exact replica outfits for all employees of different classes, positions and etc was really cool. So we’re half way into this museum and it’s fairly empty so we’re going really slow walking around. Everything on exhibit is 100% authentic from dive recovery, or personal donations or loans to be on exhibit. Meaning it’s all from the ship the day it sunk. And to be honest, some of it has a really creepy vibe. So we’re in the third class area, making fun of my Irish heritage and me saying something like “so this is how me family member traveled yeah? Not to bad for them selfs if I say so me self.”. As you turn the last corner they have some stairs with a glass wall that has water rushing down, simulating how fast the water was coming in. We come around a small half way that had a sitting bench and bathroom, so the boys went to the bathroom, I went ahead to see what was next to find it was the grand staircase, Becke and I stood there gazing for a moment when I asked what was taking the kids so long? So she went back to find out, and out of no were (and I swear she came out of thin air to this day because no one was in the room when I walked in), a young redhead woman in a full maids gown (no not the sexy lingerie you perverts), she said “Welcome! May I help you sir?” Slightly startled I turned around and said “shit, hi, yes actually, listen so look my gf is in the previous room and I’m fixing to propose on the staircase, can you like keep anyone from coming for a few moments?” I was slightly whispering so I was standing kind of close so she could hear me, and guess what? Here comes Becke, the worker jumped away from me quickly, and said hello to Becke, but man she looked pissed and just stormed up the stairs, the kids go after her. She races to the top and sits, I go after her and I’m standing there in the middle at the clock. And I tell her to come back, and she huffed and puffed, walked back down and by this moment, I saw the maid chick holding some people back at the door, I looked at Becke and she was fire truck red, I asked if she was okay she looked hot and she gave me that infamous “your in trouble tone” and a quick “No, I’m fine”. So I said “Hey babe” (reaching into my pocket and pulling the ring out), “Let’s get us a clock like this one”, she said “I guess, maybe one that works, like that redhead”. And she went to storm off again so I grabbed her arm and turned her towards me and I said “Becke, will you marry me?”.

See I didn’t get down on one knee, because years before Becke and I had talked about ways people propose and etc and she never felt like a guy should kneel, as it shows he’s below the woman. She would want him to stand up, look her in the eyes as her equal. So that’s exactly what I did. I placed that ring on her hand, and had to hold her because she went from “that sob was talking to a redhead in a maids outfit” to “J-e-l-l-oooo”. So I helped her up the stairs and the kids were like, “what’s going on? Why are you crying mom?”  So we sat there at the top of the stairs for a few moments and let her regain some leg strength, then we continued the tour. At the end we got our pictures taken and our gifts from the store and we headed to McAllisters then back to Baskins Creek.

The part that was scary was the date, April 1, 2013, and I had to keep telling her, no this is not an April fools joke. Which even our friends on Facebook thought it was at first. So April 2nd, I made a post saying “Nope, it wasn’t a joke!”. So it was the one time in my life, I truly felt vulnerable, like if she said no what the hell was I going to do next? Luckily, she said yes, and if you read my previous post, you already know the outcome. It was an amazing vacation, and here is  a video of our little trip that week.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.