I will continue to update this page with posts from our wedding – hope you enjoy!
Our Story
Even though we grew up 30 miles from each other we met at Furman University in Greenville, SC where we both played golf. Ryan’s dad, Mic, recruited me to Furman and little did he know that he was recruiting his future daughter-in-law! We didn’t start dating until the Spring of 2006 after I had transferred to the University of Alabama (following Mic who took the head women’s coaching job the summer or 2005) the same year Ryan graduated from Furman.
Ryan spent that Spring on the road with the opportunity to intern with the AJGA traveling all over the United States running junior golf tournaments. He would call and we would keep in touch by email for a couple of months. He came back to Tuscaloosa the week before we headed to… guess where… Columbus, OH for the NCAA National Championship in May 2006. He took me on our first date to Jason’s Deli 🙂 that week. I then left to go to Nationals with Mic and the team for a week.
When we got back in town Ryan had to tell me that he had been offered a graduate assistant position in the Compliance Department at Alabama. I was so excited for him because I knew this was what he wanted and it was such a great opportunity for him. He then explained to me that being a graduate assistant in the athletic department meant that we couldn’t date for that entire school year because I was a student athlete. We decided that we were going to spend the entire summer together and then we would break up when the school year started… Right then I think we both knew that we had something unique between us and we were determined to see it through. You can do anything for a year right?!
Needless to say that was one of the toughest years and on May 1st 2007 when Ryan came to my apartment and surprised me with flowers I was a happy girl!
After college, we spent two years in a different kind of long distance relationship. I was in Birmingham, Al working on a career in Financial Planning and he was in Oxford, Mississippi working on his career coaching Men’s golf.
In the summer of 2010 he accepted a position as the Assistant Men’s Golf Coach at The Ohio State University and I was fortunate to transfer within my company 2 weeks later! We love living in the same city and making the move together made it that much easier to adjust to being so far away from our favorite people. The rest is history!
The Proposal
Ryan’s parents came to visit us in Columbus in October 2010 and all weekend Ryan was trying to figure out how to ask me to see if my family would want to spend Thanksgiving in Alabama with his family and go to the Auburn-Alabama game that year. I told Ryan I would talk to Mom about it since I REALLY wanted to go to the game! Turns out that Mom and Dad knew the whole time what Ryan was planning to propose over Thanksgiving weekend.
I admit that I was acting a bit stubborn when Mom kept saying we would think about it, since we usually have a big family gathering for Thanksgiving. I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to get tickets and it would be a lot of driving and hotels would probably be booked but Ryan ended up telling me a few weeks later that they had found some extra tickets for my parents (they actually didn’t have tickets until 2 days before the game). Anything to convince me that it was a good idea and everything was going to work out!
I flew home to SC on Tuesday before Thanksgiving and on Wednesday, my parents took my brother, his girlfriend, and I to Biltmore for the day. We had just gotten done with touring the winery and we were enjoying some glasses of wine when Dad and I started talking about a conversation he had with his grandfather back when he told him he was going to ask my mom to marry him. The moment got emotional when he told me he wish he would have asked my Papaw for permission to marry my mother. Dad then made the most strategic move of the whole weekend! Wait for it…
He said “Ryan better ask me for permission before you get engaged!”
I may have had a slight suspicion that Ryan was up to something, but I knew for sure nothing was going to happen because he hadn’t talked to Dad yet! (Ryan actually asked my mother and father back in August 2010 at our friends’, Laura and John Carter’s wedding!!) I had NO idea!
We get into the car Thanksgiving morning to head to Tuscaloosa for the weekend. When we got there we had dinner (not noticing that Ryan hardly ate anything)! Ryan then pulled me aside and said that he had a surprise for my parents – We were going to take them out on the field that afternoon before the BIG game the next day. I thought “what a great idea, Dad will love it!” Still no idea…
So we all piled in two cars: Mic, Mom, and I in one and Dad, Corey, Ryan, and Kim in another. The ring was in Kim’s purse so Ryan had to somehow ride with Kim and NOT with me to the stadium. We all got out of the car and had to sign in and get wrist bands to enter the stadium. We then walked on the field and Kim said “Ryan and Sarah, walk down the field and I’ll get your picture”. Well we kept walking, and kept walking, and kept walking, and then Ryan stopped and when I turned around he was on one knee and had a BEAUTIFUL sparkly ring in his hand! It was PERFECT and through lots of tears (mostly on my end) and hugs we were engaged and our family got to share in the special moment with us 🙂 minus my brother, Ross because being a chef he had to stay home for the Holiday weekend but we celebrated back in Spartanburg!
When Ryan was telling me afterwards how he had planned everything I found out that back in November he had flown down to Atlanta for a day to pick out the ring and flew back to Ohio in the same day – the whole time I thought he was recruiting in Toledo for the day. Sneaky Sneaky!
Sweet Tea Please 