Our daughter, Sarah Thomas, has been dating a wonderful Chrisian man, Blake Weaver, for the past 15 months. When he asked to meet privately with us, we were hopeful. He did ask for her hand in marriage and then for our help in making it a truly unique event. He returned another day and video taped his asking, and our replies.
Blake then rented out an entire dinner theater for a Saturday afternoon. We had to "invent" a reason to get the two of them to go to that specific afternoon movie, "invent" a reason for her to dress up nicely, "invent" a reason that caused us to arrive at the theater in an 8 minute window of time, "invent" a last second reason why he would be late but for us to go on in, and "invent" a reason that positioned her in a specific seat which he had a video camera positioned on. We also had to "invent" a movie she would be willing to go see, even though that was not the actual movie playing in that theater that day. We also had the dinner service person take a "dummy" order prior to the movie trailers starting.
The lights go down, the trailers play, and the last trailer is his video asking us for her hand in marriage. She was TOTALLY caught off guard. I still don't know how so many people were involved and yet she had no idea of what was going on.
Sarah's reactions were priceless and we are so thankful Blake had the forsight to video tape them. His trailer ends with him playing his guitar and singing a love song to her, which he wrote, especially for this event. The song says he's waiting outide and the lights come up.
We direct her to the exit door she needs to use, and she finally sees that all the other people in the theater, which were seated in high-back chairs in front of us are friends that were wearing some form of disguise.
Upon exiting, Sarah is greeted with 30 dancers performing a practiced routine, three of them doing full flips on the concrete driveway, with drummers and majorettes from a local high school band. The dancers eventually part, like flowing water, to reveal a 95' red carpet walkway to a lone tree next to a large pond where he is standing.
As she starts down the path, she sees her brother, John Daniel, who flew in from New Jersey to surprise her, and her best friend, Leslie, who will become her Maid of Honor, who flew in from Colorado for the same purpose. Her three closest college room mates are present, all coming in from out of town for the surprise.
Blake goes on one knee, she says yes, he places a georgeos ring on her finger, they embrace, then she turns around to face everyone and literally shouts out "We're going to get married!".
Last Saturday [February 7] was a fun day and one we will all remember well. But I did have to say a prayer asking for forgiveness as it took more than one "little white lie" to pull this off.
