In my head I always imagined myself proposing to my future wife on some island in the middle of no where. But when things started getting serious with Liz, I knew that wouldn't work. She's a really hard worker, loves being home but mostly loves being surrounded by her family. So when I started to brainstorm of how I should make this happen I knew having her family involved would be the icing on the cake! I had made some small hints to her about getting married just to see what she would say but knew I wanted it to be a big surprise so I always lead her to believe that it wasn't going to happen till next year. When I heard that her parents were going to be coming down to Florida for Thanksgiving I knew it was go time. The plan was that I would do Thanksgiving dinner with her family on Thanksgiving day and we were going to do dinner with my family the night before. When we arrived at Jack Dusty in the Ritz Carlton I had the hostess pretend that we showed up early for the reservation and we would have to wait for my family to arrive to be seated. She then told us that if we wanted to we could go on the back deck because they had the heaters on and it was really nice out. I lead Liz down the back stairs and to the garden and little did she know she had a big surprise waiting. The best part is that she honestly had no idea what was going on until we were about 10 feet from the crown of flowers in the grass and could hear the music playing. I created a playlist of some of our favorite songs such as 40 Day Dream by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Caroline by Eric Church and Riptide by Vance Joy. I can honestly say that was the best moment in my life thus far! She was completely stunned and couldn't even form a real sentence. It was really quite hilarious. I had two friends taking photos and video and when they came out from hiding she didn't even recognize them, I think because she was still in shock. Shortly after, she said she wanted to FaceTime her mom and dad so when she started to call them they declined the call and walked outside onto the balcony overlooking the garden. Once again Liz lost it. At that point both of our families came down the stairs to the garden to celebrate. After we were done in the garden we all went upstairs for dinner in the private dinning room at Jack Dusty. I don't think the night could have gone any better than it did and I loved every minute of it!
