We're Getting Married

I started working on the ring in May. I reached out to Casey’s favorite designer and worked with her one-on-one to create the ring from scratch. The craziest part? The ring sat in our house for weeks, and Casey had absolutely no idea. Now for the plan. Every summer Casey goes to Wisconsin for a week. While Casey was in Wisconsin, I would secretly travel across the country and surprise her. Here's where the headaches began. The first obstacle was that we share our location with each other. For months, I randomly turned my location off, waited for her to notice, then blamed my phone. I did it so often she nearly bought me a new iPhone. Meanwhile, I was scheming with her best friend behind her back. We picked a botanical garden in Monroe. We hired a photographer. Alyssa took Casey shopping for a dress and to get her nails done. Casey later admitted she thought I might propose… when she got back to South Carolina. MY EVIL PLAN IS WORKING! The logistics kept getting harder. The proposal had to happen Sunday. Saturday was my youngest son’s birthday party. Because of custody schedules, we had to drive to up but fly back home. So I needed to leave my truck in Charlotte before the trip. So we secretly drove to Charlotte days earlier, parked my truck at the airport... and then I realized Casey could see the AirTag on my keys. So we left the airport, went to breweries nearby, and sent photos as proof of life. Saturday after the birthday party, the boys and I started the long drive north. And that’s when things almost fell apart. I had told Casey we were going to the beach overnight so she wouldn’t hear highway noise. Instead, she wanted photos. FaceTimes. Updates. I was seconds away from pulling over on the interstate, pouring water on us, and staging fake beach pictures. Instead, I panicked and just ghosted her. Her texts went from confused to frustrated to angry, and I felt terrible. I kept texting Alyssa convinced the entire surprise was going to collapse before we arrived. But I kept driving. By the time we reached the gardens, it was nearly 100 degrees. I was standing under a pavilion in a three-piece suit sweating through every layer while my parents fanned me off as we waited FOREVER! The photographer was late. Random people kept wandering into the pavilion. I "kindly" cleared every single one of them out. Then I saw her. Casey rounded the corner looking down at Aiden, completely unaware. Finally Alyssa gently took his hand so she would look up. She saw me. Her first words were, “So I’m guessing this is why you haven’t been texting me back.” I took her hand and told her I came all this way to end an argument. We always say, “I love you.” “I love you more.” and so on. I told her when I say “I love you more,” I don’t mean more than she loves me. I mean more than the bad days ahead of us. More than stress, distance, or anything life throws at us. Every single day is better with her in it, and I didn’t want another one without her. Then I asked her to marry me. I was never worried about her answer. What mattered was that she felt chosen. Prioritized. Worth every plan, every mile, and every obstacle. She said yes. But I had one more surprise. Months earlier, I learned about the tradition she has of spreading a bit of her mom’s ashes in places she visits. Her mom was her person, and I knew she needed to be there too. So I... "acquired" some. We left a small piece of her mother in the place where we got engaged. It wasn’t perfect. It was brutally hot. Aiden was rather sick. We were sweating through formal clothes. But my favorite photo isn’t one of the posed ones. It’s the moment everything finally hit her and she started crying real tears — joy, relief, love. The kind that come when you know you are chosen on purpose. This is a second marriage for both of us, and it mattered deeply to me that she never again questioned what it felt like to be someone’s priority. Because when I say, “I love you more” I mean it.