I was in Miami on vacation for a week in March. Dustin and I had talked about getting married in Miami by the end of the year so I decided when I was in town I would check out some potential venues for our future wedding. Mind you, I was not yet engaged. I knew it was out of the ordinary to look into my wedding before the engagement, but I also knew it was only a matter of time, so I figured I would make the most of my trip back home. I had read that some venues get booked almost a year in advance so I wanted to get a head start and begin researching. After talking to event coordinators, wedding planners, and caterers, I quickly learned that weddings were very expensive!  Dustin knew I was doing all this and as usual he was encouraging through it all. The day before I traveled back, I had an exhausting couple of days. I was feeling discouraged about how much everything would eventually cost and the thought of trying to plan a wedding was overwhelming.

On the trip back home, I stopped in Tallahassee to stay with Dustin and his family. When I arrived at their house it was late and there was a present on the dining room table with my name on it. Seeing the gift, I immediately got excited and asked him if I could open it. Dustin calmly explained to me that tomorrow after breakfast I would be able to open the gift. As soon as I finished my breakfast the next morning I excitedly asked him if I could open the present. In a calm, cool, and collected voice he agreed that it was time for me to open it. Taped to the outside of the gift was a note that read:

Alyssa,

    Thank you so much for all the wedding plan work this week! It means so much to me. Here is a little gift that may help with the rest of the plans!

-Dusty

I had my suspicions about there being a ring in the box. Dustin is known to trick people by putting a small gift in a big box; however, when I picked up the gift it had some weight to it so I threw that idea out the door pretty quickly. When I opened the gift there was a Bible inside. Being the cynical person I can sometimes be, the first thought that crossed my mind was that he was giving me a Bible as a hint to read it more since I had been stressing over the wedding planning process. Upon second glance, I noticed that engraved on the front of the Bible was “Alyssa Samuels Holland.” My suspicions creeped back up about there being a ring coming soon, but I kept my composure. In the Bible was a bookmark that opened up to Proverbs 31, one of my favorite passages of scripture. Tied to the bookmark was the ring and a few verses from the passage were highlighted. The words “Will you marry me?” were written on the page. It was sweet, sentimental and personal…the perfect proposal.