A dedicated boyfriend who proposed and married his partner on the same day secretly planned her dream wedding – using her PINTEREST page.
Romantic Ryan Leak, 27, overheard his girlfriend Amanda Roman, 25, confessing to a friend that her dream was to get engaged and hitched at once.
Ryan then committed a year to planning her perfect wedding, using her profile on the photo-sharing website Pinterest as guidance.
The website allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections and browse other pinboards and ‘re-pin’ images they like.
It enabled Ryan to choose every angle of Amanda’s dream wedding, from the flowers, to her dress, to the table decorations.
Amanda had created a folder entitled ‘My dream wedding’ on the website, which she used to ‘re-pin’ over 220 wedding-related images.
Ryan planned the day and then friends and family flew to the mysterious wedding destination where he had whisked Amanda on holiday.
To her complete surprise he proposed and the couple, from Dallas, America, then married just hours later.
Ryan said: “Amanda basically planned her dream wedding without even knowing it.
“Planning a whole wedding is unbelievably daunting so Pinterest was amazing as it enabled me to pick exactly what Amanda would have liked.
“I always knew I wanted an extravagant wedding, but I never anticipated doing anything as drastic as this.
“For over a year I had to arrange to take calls in private and was forced to put locks on my phone just in case she saw anything.
“We had around 100 guests and apparently over 1000 people knew what I was planning so it’s pretty amazing she didn’t find out.”
Motivational speaker Ryan proposed and wed Amanda on June 7 of this year, five years to the day after the couple first met.
Ryan, from Dallas, Texas, chose Miami, Florida as the destination for their wedding as it was a place their friends and family could easily get to.
Ryan flew Amanda out to Miami the day before the wedding under the pretence the couple were helping their friends move cities.
On the morning of the wedding Ryan collected Amanda from her hotel and drove her to the wedding venue where he dropped to one knee and proposed.
After Amanda accepted the proposal, Ryan took her to a lounge in the hotel where friends and family held up a banner saying ‘today’, unveiling the romantic surprise.
Amanda, a psychology and education graduate, said: “When I opened the door and I saw everyone that I loved standing there it was so overwhelming, I felt so overwhelmed with love.”
The couple then went to a registry office to legally tie the knot before separating to prepare for the service and reception.
Amanda’s favourite make-up artist and hair stylist was flown in to Miami to ensure her wedding look was exactly how she dreamed it would be.
Ryan said: “The day went pretty perfectly. As soon as she said yes I knew nothing would matter and we would have the best day no matter what.
Amanda, who had no idea Ryan had been planning the big day, said: “One day my friend and I were talking about wedding planning and I thought about how cool it would be to get married and engaged on the same day.
“I didn’t think through all of the details of how that would work, so I completely bypassed the fact that the groom would have to plan the entire wedding, I just pictured the day and thought how much fun it would be.
“I remember ending that conversation with my friend saying ‘I don’t think that would ever happen, but it would be really cool’.
“The day was even better than how I would have planned it. Realistically I never thought that I would be able to pull off some of the things I saw on Pinterest, but Ryan is a risk taker and he didn’t settle for my watered down version of my ‘dream wedding’ – he went for the gusto.”
To top off the romantic surprise, Ryan arranged for the newlyweds to fly to Maples and later Laguna Beach for their honeymoon.
Ryan’s brother, a worship pastor, introduced the pair back in 2008 when Amanda attended a discipleship programme at his church.
Rather than asking for traditional wedding gifts, kind Ryan asked for their guests to give to the charity A21, which fights sex trafficking around the world.
