Hannah and I both attended Texas A&M University. My roommate at the time, Justin, was dating one of Hannah’s best friends (Haley). Around the time of the Houston Livestock show and rodeo, my roommate had 2 extra tickets to the Tim McGraw show. Justin planned to invite a friend, while his girlfriend invited one of her friends.

On the night of the HLSR, I was in the front yard with my new puppy, Waylon. We saw Hannah coming down the street in her full outfit as she lived one street over from us in the Barracks. As she got closer, I said hello and told her how beautiful she looked. To my surprise, she walked right past me and into my house without a word. “Wow, this is going to be a fun night” I thought to myself. Following her inside, she was already upstairs with my roommate and his girlfriend.

We all loaded into the truck and headed to meet up with Justin’s parents at their house in cypress. After joining up with them, we headed to the rodeo. As the night went on, we all had a great time and enjoyed the concert. At one point, during the song “Something like that”, I actually ended up spilling ketchup all down the front of my shirt. Hannah seemed to really get a kick out of this. In the midst of her making fun of me, our conversation started to pick up a little bit more. Soon, we were locked into conversations and not paying much attention to the concert or our friends. In the weeks to follow, I did everything I could to spend time with Hannah.
After some serious convincing, she finally agreed to go on a real date with me. Since that night at the rodeo we have continued to build our relationship and support each other every day. Now when I tell her that she looks beautiful, she always responds with “I love you too!”

Once I had the ring (and her father's permission) and was ready to plan the proposal, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about where and how I planned to propose. I knew it was going to be difficult to coordinate everything for a surprise proposal, so I did what any man would do and enlisted some help from her friends and mother. It was a big risk to trust them not to spoil the surprise, but everyone kept the secret and it was a huge success.

Leading up to the proposal, I had a group of Hannah’s friends set up a fake photoshoot for a new line of clothes being released by their friend's local boutique. Hannah’s friends picked her up at our apartment and met the photographer (another good friend) at Buffalo Bayou Park. They had outfits for the girls to model and once they were ready they began walking through the park together. The photographer followed, snapping candid photos. After a lap through the park, Hannah finally came around the corner to see me at the bottom of the hill with a massive, light-up “MARRY ME?” Letters on the lawn.

Hannah looked incredible walking down the stairs towards me. When she reached the bottom I hugged her and dropped to one knee. After taking a moment to soak in the moment, I asked her to be my wife. She, of course, said YES!! A feeling of huge relief, excitement, and love overwhelmed us both! We celebrated with family and took photos before returning to a surprise rooftop party in the Heights to celebrate with friends and more family!