| Bride & Groom: | Wedding Date: |
| Karolyn Martin & Michael Crawn | October 30. 2004 |
| Engagement Story: | |
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I know every bride-to-be feels they have the most romantic story, and I think that each one does. I truly feel that I was proposed to in the perfect way and when I saw this opportunity in the paper, I knew I had to write my story. In order to understand the proposal, I have to start at the beginning of our relationship. My fiance's name is Mike. Mike and I first met in 6th grade. The school district I grew up in had several elementary schools that came together into one school by 6th grade. Mike was in my 6th grade class. The class had about 25 students and over the course of the year everyone got to know one another. Well, my friend had a crush on him in 6th grade and he had a crush on me. He used to call each day and we would talk. He would ask me out, but my friend liked him and I did not want to be going out with someone so young. Anyway, eventually I agreed to going somewhere in a group. We went miniature golfing together. The year proceeded and as young crushes go, it did not amount to anything. In fact in 7th grade I thought he disliked me after our 6th grade year. Then in 8th grade we had a class toghether and the I started to have a crush on him, but never said anything. The year passed and we entered high school. We came together again and started dating. He was my first official boyfriend. We only dated for a few weeks and then ended our relationship. We always got along well and enjoyed spending time together, but we were too young. We did not talk for the rest of high school until graduation day. We were asked to line ourselves up for graduation. Once we were all in line I looked to my left to see who I would be walking down the aisle with and sure enough it was Mike Crawn. We congratulated each other on that day and left high school thinking we would never talk again. Five years later we bumped into each other on Cinco de Mayo and we began our friendship again. Then inevitably we fell in love. We both feel we always loved each other it just wasn't the right timing. I always said, nobody ever made me feel as special as Mike and now I get to marry him! Now for the proposal story. After a year of dating, I decided to go back to graduate school. I'm a teacher and I wanted to get a masters in reading. Mike decided to go back to school and that took away a lot of our time. Anyway, I'm a first grade teacher and I took a course called BookArts. Mike is an amazing artist, and I really relied on his help with this course. Mike's profession is sales, but he has an amazing talent in art (as you can see Mike is an amazing guy!). So, one of the projects in this course was to create a textured book. A very popular children's author is Eric Carle and the book we were to make would be similar to the illustrations he created. Eric Carle is a favorite author among my students. He paints textured paper over 100 sheets and then uses them to cut and paste to make illustrations. It took us about 3 - 4 hours to do a page in a 12 page book. He was by my side throughout the book. You may be asking why I am sharing this, but this is a major factor in the proposal story. Anyway, I knew the proposal from Mike would be amazing, but I never could have predicted it to be as amazing as what he did. He decided to make a textured book of our story from 6th grade until now including the boy proposing and then living happily ever after. So even though he was so busy and had so much to do, he made this book. He called it Boy Meets Girl. He had some help from his brother and his brother's girlfriend and their son. Well, he had the date Oct. 4th, and he finished the book, he just needed a nice day. He planned to ask me in a park that we go to for pinics or just quiet time together. It is a small little park that not may people go to. On Oct. 4th he woke up and it was raining. He was bummed. He drove around to find another park, I didn't know any of this, and finally decided that our park is in the book and should be where he asks. Prior to all of this he of course asked for my parent's permission and they were thrilled. Back to the proposal -- he picked me up. It was just a typical Sat. to me. He said, why don't we get a mocha frosty ( a drink we love from a favority coffee shop) and go to the park. I said okay, but didn't think I wanted to go to the park on a rainy day. Anyway, we get to the park and says I'm just going to open the back hatch of the truck (he has a Durango) and sit and relax. He said he wanted me to join him. Of course I had to be difficult and say I was too cold and didn't want to. He said he really just wanted me to come back and relax. I finally did and there was a rose there for me. He said he had been so busy and felt bad that he could not see me much and gave me the rose. Then he said I have another present in the bag, a book. I pulled it out and recognized the textured style of the book and began to cry. He had me read it aloud to him. When I got to the second to last page (on this page the boy is down on his knee in the park) he stopped me and he got down on his knee and asked me to make his 13 year long dream come true and I of course said yes and turned to the last page which shows a bride and groom and said and they lived happily ever after. That is our amazing proposal story and we can't wait for Oct. to spend the rest of our lives together. |
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