The day before I left for our vacation to Hawaii, I got to photograph Joey and Renae's proposal! Since I was leaving the next day, I wanted to wait to post their blog just to be sure that they would have enough time to tell all of their family and friends. Now that it's been almost 2 weeks, I get to post it! :)
Joey and Renae have been together for quite some time now and have talked about getting married but we're planning on tying the knot for awhile yet. Joey will be moving to Iowa later on this year and wanted to ask Renae for her hand in marriage before then so he started planning his proposal. Joey really went all out! He planned for months with his co-workers and shopped around for the perfect ring.
Renae is a student teacher at Miami Elementary here in Lafayette, Indiana so Joey really wanted to surprise her and also tie in the children in her classroom. We met with the teacher of Renae's classroom along with the principal of Miami Elementary so we could hash out all of the details. Joey decided that he was going to make shirts for all of the students in the classroom that had different letters on them and they would incorporate them into a special spelling lesson for that day. Renae would be using the whiteboard to spell out words and then the children would work together and spell each word with their shirts. To make sure that Renae wouldn't be suspicious that I was there photographing their class that day, the principal told the class that the Journal & Courier would be doing a story on whiteboards and their class would be the one that would be photographed. I did work for Journal & Courier back in the day for a few years so it wasn't a complete white lie! :) The students were not filled in on the surprise just to make sure that they wouldn't spill the beans on accident so it was a complete surprise for them too!
The day started off with some of the normal spelling words, Renae would write the word on the whiteboard and then the students would work together to spell the word.
After a few rounds, the word for Renae to write out was "surprise" however when she turned around the students had spelled "Marry Me!"
Renae's face was priceless! The students were still a little confused at this point!
In comes Joey.
And he asked for her hand in marriage. The students then realized what was happening!
Everyone wanted to see her ring and say congratulations!
What a stunner!
Of course we braved the cold for a few images outside! :)
