Real Wedding: Melissa & David

Melissa: After undergrad, I moved back to my parents’ house and worked for a year before getting accepted into medical school.

In August, an old high school friend found out that I was back home and invited me over to her house for a Bible study. That’s where I met David.

David: When Melissa walked into the house of my weekly bible study, I remember thinking, “I need to make sure this girl comes back next week!” I tried hard to make sure her first visit was an enjoyable one so that she would keep coming back. And that she did!

Every Friday night, I would look forward to getting to know Melissa more and more. After many bible study conversations, many wacky board games with friends, and many great conversations about music, snuggies, and snowglobes, I finally found the courage to ask Melissa out on a date. The rest, as they say, is history.

Describe the proposal.

I (David) came to visit Melissa in the Caribbean over her semester break from medical school. We spent the day with Melissa’s parents enjoying the island. We rented a hobie-cat with her parents and sailed around the bay of the beautiful Caribbean Sea and explored an old military fort. In the evening, wanting to watch the sunset, we headed for the beach.

We sat on the dock together hand in hand looking out at the sunset. However, the amount of clouds made this particular sunset very hazy. A short while later I pulled an iPod and a portable speaker out of my pocket and suggested slow dancing on the dock. Being the music junkie that I am, Melissa didn’t think this was anything out of the ordinary. But just as we started to dance, the waves started to become more violent and drench us with water! After we quickly ran back to shore, I started to think, “This is not going as planned! Maybe I should try again tomorrow night and hopefully the sunset will be better.”

Nevertheless, I thought, “Let’s see if she wants to take a walk down the beach and maybe things will start going better. If it feels right, I’ll still ask her tonight.” As we set out down the shoreline, Melissa decided to take a picture of our footprints in the sand. As she was taking a picture of the footprints, the high tide came and washed one of my brand new sandals towards the Sea. Spotting this right away, Melissa dashed for it and pegged it with her foot, right before the rocky waves crashed into her poor feet. So now, as we continued to walk down the beach with Melissa limping a bit from the bruise on her foot, I thought to myself, “Wow. First the lame sunset and now this. This is REALLY not going as planned.”

But just as the thought of proposing that night started to become an afterthought, Melissa exclaimed, “Handsome! We have the beach all to ourselves!” So I suggested that we try dancing again. And as the night grew dark and the full moon crept out from behind the clouds, we slow danced to a few of our favorite slow songs in the white Caribbean sand. All of sudden, as I realized how much fun we were having, I knew I had to find the right moment to get on one knee. But knowing how much Melissa loves surprises, I needed a distraction.

Just then, Melissa asked me, “Hey, I am having lots of fun dancing with you, but do you mind if I try to get a picture of the lights of the city across the bay? It looks gorgeous right now!” “Not at all,” I said smiling, as she turned to snap a picture. So I prayed in my head to God, “Now?” I instantly heard, “Do it! Do it! Do it!” So I got down on one knee and opened the box. Immediately, the ring fell out of the box into the sand! After fishing the ring out of the sand, I frantically brushed the sand off the diamond ring while Melissa was still busy trying to get a better shot – oblivious of what was going on behind her. Much to her surprise when she turned around, I was kneeling in the sand with the diamond ring outstretched in hand. After a few mushy phrases about how much I loved her, I asked her to marry me. She said, “YES!”

As we expressed our excitement to each other, we both noticed the clear, starry skies above. It turned out to be a beautiful night after all! And after an amazing mahi-mahi dinner on the beach with Melissa’s parents as she gushed over the ring, we found a swimming pool all to ourselves under the bright starry sky! I could not have imagined such a perfect night!

My younger sister and best friend are very artsy. I knew I wanted to make custom thank-you letters for our wedding, so I asked them to help me design and make letters from foam core to spell “T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U.” Kate took pictures of the wedding party holding these glittery letters between the ceremony and reception.

I printed the thank-you pictures and attached them to blank cards with photo corners. (I bought the blank white cards in bulk packs of 50 from Michaels.) It cost me around 23₵ a piece – much cheaper than any of the photo cards you can buy pre-made.

And the best part is that you can easily remove the picture from the card if you only want to keep the picture. I got many compliments for my thank-you cards, and it was super easy!

I often looked through the wedding blogs for ideas. One day I saw someone who had hung up old black and white family photos somewhere in their reception hall.

That inspired me to collect wedding photos from all of our closest relatives – parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and siblings – to display on the tables at the reception. We spent about a year collecting and printing these pictures, but it was well worth it.

Later I found heavy stickers to put on all the frames we’d gotten so the pictures could double as table numbers. I wrote a note to accompany each seat to let everyone know how much we appreciate our families and the wonderful example these marriages have been to us. We let each couple take home the photo as a keepsake from our wedding.