YES!
August 17, 2018
Nashville, Tennessee
Today I'm going to be posting my engagement story! I wrote this post back in the summer right after it happened and went into great detail so that I would never forget a single thing, so grab your wine and let's get started!
Earlier in the spring of this year, Kenny told me that he was going to plan a surprise trip for a weekend around my birthday as a present. He wanted to keep the destination secret, but make sure that I had time off and didn’t make any other plans for that time. I was so excited! We always have the best time traveling together, and he’s the best and always drives us.
In July, we were set to go to the Taylor Swift concert in the Redskins football stadium, and we had booked a hotel in Northern Virginia to stay in after the concert. Since I work for the state of Virginia, sometimes hotels offer discounts for state workers, so I logged into the hotels.com account that Kenny and I share to see which hotel he had booked so I could research it to see if I could get a better price with my state ID. When I logged into the account, I accidentally saw that he had booked a stay at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel for my birthday trip. I was simultaneously insanely excited and devastated! I had ruined the surprise! I felt so guilty, and texted Kenny what I had done. He was a little bummed that he couldn’t be the one to reveal the surprise, but he said now I had longer to get excited for the trip… WHICH I DID. I spent weeks researching restaurants and attractions I wanted to experience while we were there for our long weekend. We’ve been to Nashville two times in the past, and it’s one of my absolute favorite places I’ve ever been. There’s just something about it that’s so magical to me, and I always miss being there no matter how long it’s been since we’ve been. The Gaylord Opryland is one of the major things that makes Nashville so special to us, it is absolutely magical but we’ve never stayed there before, but now we were going to! I was SO excited.
So it came to time for my birthday trip. I came down to Kenny’s house on Thursday night so that we could leave early on Friday morning. “Early” is relative, but I intended to leave for the trip around 9:00am. Kenny is pretty hard to roll out of bed in the morning, so it typically takes three good tries before he’s “up,” and then he has to play on his phone for a while before he’s TRULY ready to arise (haha, love you Kee!) So, I had to make sure I got up early enough to account for the amount of time it would inevitably take for me to get Kenny up, too. We got out of the house a little later than I had wanted to, but we made it on the road! I always love the drive through southwestern Virginia, the mountains are so beautiful, and I love spending that time alone with my Kee.
I had heard that there was a new Restoration Hardware attached to the Green Hills Mall, and I knew that nothing else I wanted to do that weekend was really close to that area, so I had told Kenny that I wanted to go straight there so that we could walk around the mall after being in the car all day, and I could check out Restoration Hardware (and get a glass of prosecco, yum!) We got to the mall, and walked inside. We walked around a bit, and I had an exchange that I wanted to make at Sephora, so we went and did that. The whole time we were walking around Kenny was acting antsy and a little unusual. I’m very sensitive to when he’s acting “off,” so I knew something was going on. He kept acting like he was in a hurry to get through the mall, and I kept joking with him like “oh, we’re on vacation, we just got here and have no set plans, but SOMEHOW we’re in a hurry!” He laughed it off, but continued to act just as rushed, ha! We ended up browsing (rushing) through a few more stores before Kenny convinced me that it was time to get to Restoration Hardware. We walked around the inside of the mall trying to find the way into RH before realizing that the only way in was from the outside. We eventually got inside and I was overwhelmed by how cool and pretty it was in there! I went to the bar and ordered a (pricey – yikes) glass of prosecco, and we started walking around. There are four levels of the Nashville RH, and outdoor balconies, and I wanted to take my time and explore all of them! But of course, Kenny was gently coaxing me to hurry through so that we could get to the hotel “by 5:00” so that we could “change clothes and not get to dinner too late” (I think it was shortly after 4:00 at this point). I didn’t want to rush, but clearly Kenny had secret motives, so I obliged to his soft rushing.
The entire time we were at the mall, I had the possibility of a proposal in the back of my mind. Why else would Kenny be acting all antsy when it was supposed to be MY relaxed birthday weekend getaway?! After we walked through the entire store for the most part, and I had finished my prosecco, we got back on the road to head to the hotel. From my research before the trip, I was under the impression that the drive from the mall to the hotel should’ve taken 15-20 minutes, but due to Friday after-work traffic and a couple of minor wrecks that had occurred on our route, it ended up taking 30-40 minutes for us to get back to the hotel, putting us there well after 5:00 (sorry, Kenny!) We got to the hotel, parked, got checked in, and got up to our room. Our room was AMAZING, it was in the cascades section of the Gaylord Opryland, and I would’ve been perfectly content spending the rest of the evening hanging out with Kenny in our room with the doors to the balcony open to the beautiful rainforest greenhouse outside. BUT, we had a secret mission to accomplish, so we changed out of our road trip clothes, grabbed Kenny’s camera, and headed back downstairs to the cascades to take some photos. Kenny can always convince me to go somewhere by saying he’ll take pictures of me, so that part was no problem. We walked around the perimeter of the cascades looking for potential photo spots. He took a few photos of me that I didn’t love, so we continued our walk around the cascades. We came around a corner to an area with this big fountain that we’ve spent a lot of time together at in our past trips to the Gaylord Opryland (although I didn’t recognize where we were at first!) We saw a lady taking photos of a man and a little girl at the fountain, so we kept our distance as not to get in their way. Kenny looked at me and said “do you want to ask her if she’ll take our picture together?” I always feel awkward asking strangers for photos, and they usually don’t turn out great anyway, but the lady had a HUGE professional camera and it appeared like she knew what she was doing, so I said yes.
Kenny asked the lady if she’d take a few photos of us, and she excitedly agreed. He handed her his camera and she took a couple of shots of us. She started asking us where we were from and what brought us to Nashville, and we small talked for a few moments. She told me to put my purse down to get some better photos of us, and I didn’t really think anything of it. Somehow during this exchange, she switched from holding Kenny’s camera to holding her camera, which I didn’t even notice until later! The situation was getting a little suspicious, and I looked over at Kenny and saw him making a fist behind his back… at that point, I basically know that this was the moment! Like many other girls’ proposal stories, the next few moments were basically a blur. Kenny got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him! I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I do remember him saying “do you know where we are?” referring to the fountain, and I can’t remember if I had realized it yet, but it felt so special in that moment that we were there! He didn’t have a long speech, and now I know he was so nervous that even if he had one planned, he could’ve never remembered it! As he went to put the (most absolute perfect) ring on my finger, he started putting it on my right hand, and I had to say "Wrong hand," in between elated giggles. He was still so nervous, it was super cute.
So at that point, the jig was up; we were ENGAGED and I got to hear Kenny and the photographer (NOT actually a random lady!) spill all the deets on how they got in connection with each other, and how long the proposal had been in the works, and why Kenny had been in such a dang rush to leave the mall and get to the hotel. I even started making connections with weird things Kenny had been doing that day. For example, I tried to take his camera bag to the car when we were packing up to leave, and he was really weird about me doing it, insisting that he had to. Turns out, that’s where he had the ring hidden and he didn’t want to risk me finding it!
Apparently Kenny had had the trip/proposal planned since March (five months!), and had contacted someone from the hotel asking about a local photographer who would be willing to come shoot the proposal. The woman he talked to had a friend (Maria of Maria Latham Photography, check her out!) who is a local Nashville photographer who she put him in contact with. Kenny even showed her photos from my Instagram ahead of time so that she knew what my style was and how I liked photos to look, so sweet! They had planned to meet at 5:00 (explaining the rush at the mall!) the fountain, which was a minor ordeal all in itself. Although Kenny and I have visited the Gaylord Opryland twice before and explored it extensively, it’s easy to get lost in there! He told me after the proposal that he had Googled searched for images of fountains inside the Gaylord until he found THE ONE, and then he sent it to the employee from the hotel he had been talking to to pinpoint its location, and THEN told Maria where it was so she could get there in advance.
When we “ran into” Maria (and her husband and daughter) she was pretending be taking a photoshoot of her family, when really they were just waiting around for us to get there to execute the plan! Kenny had been texting Maria that evening about where we were and our ETA. She told him what she was wearing so he could be on the lookout for her, and he told her what he was wearing and “to look for a guy with a girl who was way to pretty for him” how freaking cute!! Maria told us that her daughter was so excited to be playing lookout for us while they waited for us to arrive at the fountain, and she was the first one to spot us!
After the proposal, Maria shooed her husband and daughter away, and let Kenny and I drag her around wherever we wanted to take more photos. It was so much fun! She was super accommodating, and took a bunch of photos on her iPhone too (shoutout portrait mode) so that she could send them to us and we could have them right away. We walked around for about an hour with her taking photos before she met back up with her family to head to dinner. Maria actually wrote a blog post about the proposal from her point of view, which you can read on her website!
After that, I was like “what do we do now?!” haha! We headed back up to our room for a while to collect ourselves, and then went to head downtown to see what we could get into. Kenny stopped for gas, and I called my mom to tell her that we were ENGAGED! And the first thing she said to me was “…Engaged in what?” COME ON, MOM. Kenny actually did meet up with my parents to talk to them about proposing the Monday before the trip, and it’s a good thing they said yes considering the amount of planning he had already put into it, ha!
After talking to my parents, we headed downtown and walked around a bit before going to Acme Feed and Seed for dinner and dancing (a group called Sam McCrary and the Mix was performing that night, and they were so much fun!) I actually didn’t tell anyone else that I was engaged until the next day, I wanted to just bask in it with my bee for a while!
The rest of the weekend was magical, we had such a good time exploring Nashville and eating some amazing food along the way. On Saturday morning, we had gone down to the Gulch for brunch at a rooftop restaurant (L.A. Jackson, on the roof of the Thompson Hotel) and it was GORGEOUS outside, but while we were walking around, it started raining SO hard. We sought shelter in Loft, and the rain eventually stopped. I checked the weather on my phone and it looked like the storm had passed, so we went back outside to walk around some more. Within minutes, it suddenly started POURING again. Like, I’ve-never-been-in-more-of-a-downpour pouring. We were out in the rain for less than a minute, and RAN as fast as we could for cover. We got absolutely SOAKED, I’ve never gotten so soaked from rain before, and especially not in such a short amount of time! Needless to say, we ended up having to go back to the hotel to change and dry off. When we got back to the hotel, there was a note that had been put under the door. It was from the lady who works for the hotel that Kenny had been coordinating with before the trip. It said that she hoped we had a good trip and made memories that would last a lifetime. That note was so sweet and meant so much to me, it made me feel so special!
That night we went to a restaurant called The Mockingbird and had the BEST dinner. Our waitress was super nice and adorable, and I got the most unreal dish called "shroom boom" that was a hash brown waffle, TONS of sauteed mushrooms, and broccolini. During dinner, two of my best friends who live in New York City FaceTimed me to scream about the news of the engagement. Our waitress heard, and was like "Did you guys just get engaged? I would've brought bubbles if I would've known!" She asked us if we wanted champagne, and I said um, YES! Kenny doesn't drink so he said no, but she brought two champagnes out for us anyway so that we could cheers. It was so sweet and it made us feel extra special!
Another random cute thing that happened over the weekend was that on our last night there, Kenny and I were downtown again walking around. There are lots of random people who walk around selling red roses by the stem. One of them approached Kenny and he said “how much for four?” and he got me the roses! It was so random but so freaking sweet and cute, and one of the million and one reasons I love that boy!
It was so sad to have our amazing birthday/proposal/vacation weekend come to an end, but we had a great time on the trip home together just spending more one-on-one time together. We listened to a ton of cute and meaningful songs together (and cried more than a little!) and we also stopped at a gas station and sat in the car for like 30 minutes together preparing our engagement announcement Instagram posts together, because at that point we still hadn’t announced it yet. I don’t think either of us were prepared for how nervous we’d be to make that post, ha! It’s just like, you only have one chance to make that post, it has to be perfect! Eventually we just cut ourselves off and counted to three, and published the posts! I got a flood of comments/texts from friends and acquaintances saying how excited they were, and the attention was so much fun, let’s be real.
Overall, it was an absolutely magical weekend with my love who I get to spend FOREVER with! Now, let me get back to wedding planning…
No comments