Farragut State Park Engagement: Ryan & Elizabeth
I think the best way to start off this blog is by making a statement. Dan is the man. Yeah. You see, a couple years before Ryan and Elizabeth ever met Dan started talking to Ryan about her, and also talking to Elizabeth's dad about Ryan. The first time Elizabeth heard of Ryan, it was roughly a year before they ever met - her dad was trying to get them together. I don't know about you, but I've never exactly had much faith that my parents would find the right one for me, I wanted to do that. Elizabeth must have thought something similar, because she didn't meet with Ryan.
Fast forward one year, she decides to go to a friends house (Dan's house, if I remember right) for a trivia night. Now, something became clear to me as we talked and walked, and that is Elizabeth is actually quite competitive. She doesn't like to lose, and she expects to win. She's that good. So she goes to trivia night and loses (I'm told it was quite close) to Ryan in trivia.
Yeah.
So Ryan didn't know anything about the situation. He was invited over to play, but he didn't know Dan was working behind the scenes to try and get these two together. So he was his normal, kind, thoughtful, smart self. He also didn't know how upset Elizabeth was at losing to him in trivia (she hid it well).
Coming out of trivia night Ryan didn't have much thoughts toward Elizabeth. She was beautiful (obviously), smart, kind, but she was also just another person that was there. He wasn't thinking about it. Elizabeth however, who knew she was coming to meet Ryan was in a different place. Her problem was she couldn't discount him right away - he actually BEAT her in trivia. Not to mention, he had a pretty great smile. She told me after this night, she was "hopeful" but she didn't really have any feelings towards this handsome engineer.
Now, Dan had a plan, and the first step of his plan was to get these two to meet. Check. Now he needed them to become friends. So he had a barbeque and invited both of them. This was a much larger social gathering, and this aloud them to both talk in a more natural setting. And talk they did! Not the whole time, but enough to leave an impression. After the barbeque Elizabeth would think "oh man, I'm in trouble" as she was clearly seeing Ryan's positive qualities. Ryan, in contrast, was really starting to notice this beautiful girl that seemed to be coming to a lot of his friends events. So much so, he would ask (you guessed it) Dan for her number to invite her to his birthday party.
She came.
And even though they only talked a little bit at the party, it was here where Elizabeth started to really be interested. For Ryan, this is where his interested really started to build. With phone numbers in hand, they would start to text. This lead to a deeper friendships, a couple nights for some drinks, and even an opera with Elizabeth's sisters. It was the opera where Ryan would realize this was becoming something real. It wouldn't take long, three official dates later they were both fully on board and highly interested in each other. That was a little over a year ago, and now they are married (as this blog is taking place after their wedding, even though we took the photos a little before! They came together to say "I don't want anyone else, I just want you, forever" and it's amazing. I can't wait to show you more of the wedding, but until then, I hope you love these photos of their engagement.
