Katie & Kyle are getting married today! & I’m the lucky enough one who gets to share their day with them: well, me and my camera 
Before the ceremony starts, here’s chapter two of their engagement story…
Chapter 2: September 22, 2009
It was Katie’s birthday and we had tickets to go to a luau. It included dinner and a show with all the traditional Hawaiian dancers and music. It was awesome. In fact, everything we did on Maui was awesome. We had gone on a bus trip to Hannah, around the east end of the island and met a couple on their honeymoon from the UK. Turns out they were seated at the table right next to us.
I could tell Katie was thinking about them and how they seemed happily married and she wished she was. She just seemed kind of down. I had a twenty five cent ring in my pocket and I was getting more nervous as the night went on. Little did Katie know that in a couple of hours she would have a surprise, and a really important question to answer. It was all I could do to not ask her right then and there. Then before dinner was served, the luau host invited the crowd to a short dance by the water for all the honeymooners and married couples. This didn’t help her mood. We ate dinner and watched the show. I knew I had to ask her tonight. The scene played out in my head over and over again. I kept fiddling with the ring in my pocket. I had my hand around it several times to almost pull it out and ask her. I wanted to wait till we were somewhere by ourselves to pop the big question. I kept thinking about what I was going to say. I knew with almost no uncertainty that she would say yes, but I still had a million butterflies in my stomach. I missed my chance at the luau and we were heading back to the condo. While we were walking up the steps I asked Katie if she wanted to go for a moonlit walk on the beach. The water was just right there; you could hear the waves splashing up on the shore. She said no. If she only knew.
We went inside and told my Grandma about the night. It was only about 10 o’clock, it wasn’t too late. So I asked her again about a moonlit walk on the beach. I can’t remember exactly what I said to convince her, but she finally agreed. I still had the ring in my pocket, and by this time I think I had two million butterflies in my stomach. We walked down to the beach and walked a ways and then turned back. My heart was beating so fast. Thumping up into my throat. Katie asked what was wrong, and I told her that all the walking was making my tired. And that is when I did it. I asked the love of my life to marry me on a beautiful white sandy beach of Maui. I kneeled down, pulled out a little plastic bubble, popped the top off and pulled out my twenty five cent ring. The look on her face was like something I had never seen on her before. She was so surprised. It didn’t take long for her to say yes.
The moon was shinning, but there still wasn’t enough light to see the perfect, hand-selected ring on her left hand. I can remember her looking at it when we got closer to the building and there was more light, and just looking at me and smiling. In fact she didn’t stop smiling for a while. When we got back inside we showed my Grandma and she said “Oh, that’s why he wanted to take you for a walk on the beach tonight” She looked at the ring and I think instinct told her to say how nice it was. It wasn’t until the next day that she examined it closer that she figured out that it wasn’t a high-dollar piece. I had pulled it off with a twenty five cent ring.
The next day Katie sent a picture message to, I think everyone she knows, of the ring on her finger. She got responses like “How big” and “Very Nice”. She was so very happy. She was engaged, maybe not married yet, by her 30th birthday. I hope it was the biggest birthday surprise of her life.
The ring, it turns out, didn’t wear like normal jewelry. It kept getting tangled in her hair. It ended up getting lost while up in the mountains. I suspect it broke, after all it was only twenty five cents. I had the other two rings I had bought while trying to get a good one, still in the center console. So Katie dug out the ruby red oval and put it on her ring finger. This served as her engagement ring until we picked out a “real” ring about a week later.
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