After Months of Sneaking Around… A Surprise Proposal & Gift!
Where do I even begin? I’ve known Tom since 7th or 8th grade and I’ve been lucky enough to stay in contact with him & quite a few others from back then! When Matt and I started double dating with Tom & Ava, I quickly saw they were well matched. Besides all the car-talk (right, Ava? 😉 ), they have similar even-tempered personalities, interests, & tastes. Ava dotes on Tom and Tom loves on Ava right back! And Ava… Ava the Avocado… well she’s quite possibly the sweetest, kindest person you’ll ever meet. She’s extremely thoughtful and I’ve never heard a mean thing come out of her mouth (& let me tell you, Tom is an easy target for jokes haha! 😉 ) I wasn’t terribly surprised at all when Tom told me he was planning a proposal!
Fast forward a bit, Tom drops by and asks me to help him figure out Ava’s ring size & preference. We came up with a ploy that Tom was going to ask Ava to take me out ring shopping because Matt had supposedly asked Tom if Ava could help him find out what sort of ring *I* would like when really I’m figuring out what *she* likes. The very next day I get a text from Ava asking if I’d like to go ring shopping with her since she wants to see what’s out there. Plus, you know, the whole “girl-thing” of knowing what each other likes just incase on of the boys were to ask one of us for some help in the ring department. Well…. SEVEN jewelers and TWO days of shopping for a grand total of TEN hours later, I reported back to Tom that we had finally found a winner. Mission accomplished. (On my end anyway – Tom went on and had a beautiful, near flawless diamond dropped into a custom-made band for Ava!)
Then Tom tells me when & where he’s planning on proposing and I was itchinggg to hear whether or not he was going to have it photographed. Well, long story short I was lucky enough to be trusted with the task and I penned it onto my calendar (in code of course). The date was set for May 18th, 2019 in the Wisconsin Dells during Automotion where Ava would least expect it! (Because…you know… it’s all cars n’ such. 😛 )
Who else was watching the weather over the weekend? It was nuts, right? It was saying rain & thunderstorms over a large portion of the state. I was a little peeved & worried to say the least – I can only imagine how Tom was feeling about it all haha! Well, turns out his prayers paid off because we were blessed with JUST enough time for the car show and proposal! Here’s how that went….
The Day of the Show…
We all arrived at Automotion and started strolling around. This is about the time where Ava’s eyes latched onto a matte olive green Jeep. Coincidentally, it’s the exact car she’s always wanted in the exact color & finish she loves. Of course I was “just here to take pictures of the cool cars” so I pretended to snap a few of “just the car”. 😉 Then, since Ava is a little on the short side, Tom picked her up so she could see sleek interior. I can’t get over Tom’s big smile as he’s showing her the Jeep – all his work of driving 30-something hours to get it from South(or North?) Dakota during an icy snowstorm, getting the olive green wrap done, and loads-of-other-jazzy-car-things-that-I-don’t-understand-so-cannot-relay-here was coming to fruition. 🙂
The Proposal
After a couple hours of checking out all the other cars, it was finally time for the awards! Our crowd gathered around the announcer and Matt & I separated away from Ava & Tom a bit so I’d have space to photograph when the time came. (This is when Ava later told me she was so confused why I wasn’t hanging out by them haha! After the proposal it was pretty funny to help her connect the dots between all the slightly odd things that happened in the last 4 months. 😛 ) I snapped a couple of Tom & Ava and caught what would appear to be an excited Tom and an oblivious Ava. 
At the end, the announcer finally said that there was one last award…in the Jeep category… and he said that the Jeep was to be awarded to an “Ava… Ava Banimahd”. Ohman Ava’s face! The change from blank confusion to happy confusion was the cutest thing haha! And here’s when I’ll dip out and let the images tell the rest of the story. <3
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YI{{{{IE! Congratulations Tom & Ava <3 So happy for you both, even tho I knew Tom was getting ready to propose. Robz was dying to tell someone, LOL