Our Story

How We Met (taken from our Wedding website)

Returning to the United Kingdom from an exercise in Las Vegas, Chris had been given notice that not all the exercise equipment made it back to the UK successfully. He then needed to return to the United States with less than 12 hours notice to travel to San Antonio.
Meanwhile, Savannah planned a night out with her sister Brianna, her brother Corey, and her cousin Cassie. They had a nice meal out on the Riverwalk, before going to a British Pub called Mad Dogs.
Chris had traveled and worked on his own that weekend before heading to the Riverwalk for a beer. Towards the end of the night, Brianna went to the bar to pay the bill and bumped into Chris and he apologized. To Brianna's amazement he had a British accent and immediately turned to her sister and dragged Savannah up to meet him.
Chris and Savannah spent the next 2 hours laughing and talking, as they left he asked for her telephone number and stole a kiss goodnight.
The next day they organized to meet that afternoon and went back to the Riverwalk. They spent every moment they could spend together before Chris had to fly home again.
Savannah and Chris stayed in contact by every way possible, helping their friendship blossom into a strong and beautiful relationship.

How He Popped The Question

For a two week period over Christmas/New Year 2009 Savannah decided to travel to the United Kingdom to meet Chris' family and friends.
Chris, however, had been thinking about their relationship, how it had been growing and where it would be leading to in the future. The distance made their relationship unique but it also had to change if they were to have a life together. This spurred Chris, along with the timing of Savannah's holiday, which meant that they could travel to see Chris' father, step-mother and close friends in Spain... a beautiful setting.
Back in September, Chris and Savannah had been taking a walk through a shopping mall in San Antonio and Savannah had shown a great interest in a particular Engagement and Wedding band set. The jeweler was Helzberg Diamonds, a Texan based store.
When Chris returned home he went about arranging an appropriate time to call Mr Mikula and ask him for Savannah's hand in marriage. When asked, Mr Mikula had only one request, he asked Chris to make sure that he would always take care of her, to which Chris agreed.
Helzberg Diamonds do not ship jewelery outside of the United States however, so Chris would not be able to get the ring to the United Kingdom before Savannah arrived! He called upon Savannah's wonderful family to help. Over the next two months and a lot of problems with financial transfers they we able to purchase the rings just three days before Savannah was due to fly to the UK...
If they mailed the rings, they wouldn't arrive in time, so Savannah's mother, Sandra, came up with the idea of hiding the rings inside of Savannah's luggage. She couldn't know, so they hid the ring box inside of Chris' Christmas present! A risky solution if Savannah had found it, but that was the least of problems to come.
Christmas 2009 saw some of the worst weather for half a century on both sides of the Atlantic, causing Savannah's flight to be delayed from Texas and, in turn, made her miss her connecting flight from Holland to the UK. Chris had taken time from work to go early to Manchester to ensure that the snow did not interfere with picking Savannah up from her long flight. Chris drove through the snow for four hours to reach Manchester Monday evening and go to bed knowing that Savannah had already started her journey and was in-flight across the Atlantic.
The following morning Chris frantically checked across the internet to find out if Savannah's flight had made it on time and into Amsterdam on time and then to see if the connecting would be too... It wasn't. Savannah struggled to contact him, using emails and stranger's phones to get the message through that every flight to Manchester had been canceled! It was apparent that Savannah just needed to get across the English Channel, he told her to 'catch any flight'! Savannah then begged and pleaded to the airport staff and found a flight to Norwich, Chris' home town and the next destination on their trip. She contacted Chris and told him it would be inbound into Norwich at 4:30pm; it was already 11am.
Chris got on the road, after removing the foot of snow from the car, and got on the epic journey through the snow. The trip should normally take about 5 hours. As Chris crossed the snow ridden country and he listened intently to the traffic reports, every road he had taken closed within an hour of his passing and the snow crept in from the east.
Luckily, Savannah's flight got another hour's delay into Norwich, where Chris had called forward and asked his good friends, Rob and Tasha, if they could go to the airport ahead of him to collect Savannah if he couldn't make it in time. Tasha text him when he was under a mile away from the airport to let him know that she had finally arrived... but without bags. Where was the ring? After they had both had extremely long and arduous journeys, they were just glad to have finally got to each other.
Savannah spent the next 10 days of a very cold winter with only her hand luggage! Fortunately Sandra, her mother, had told her to put all her Christmas presents in her hand luggage... hidden in which, was the ring! Thank you Sandra!
After a week of driving back and forth to Asda (Britain's Walmart) trying to find just enough clothes to get Savannah through the next day, Chris and Savannah had a great Christmas with all Chris' family and friends in Norfolk before their trip to Spain to see Chris' father.
By now the snow had really taken hold in the UK and most airports had been shut for days and all the main roads had been shattered with closures and accidents. Not surprisingly, Chris allowed only 5 hours for a 3 hour trip... which wasn't enough! Arriving 20 minutes after the flight had left, Chris and Savannah had to find a last minute hotel and rearrange for flight again the next day. Just another slight set-back.
Once Chris and Savannah arrived in Spain it was such a relief, but not too long there would be another obstacle. Chris had arranged for one of his best mates, who is a chef, to make them a private dinner at his restaurant on New Year's Eve. Once the dinner was over, Chris would take Savannah out onto the beach and propose. This was the plan until Chris' mate called on New Year's Eve to say that he could not make the dinner at his restaurant because he held an 80th birthday party the night before and the guests had trashed the restaurant. There would not be enough time for him to clean up and make dinner. Chris was shocked and his mind started to race as he tried to think of how he could change his plan on such short notice.
Chris' dad and stepmom, John and Julia, came to the rescue. They suggested that Chris propose at their house in the downstairs guest and pool house. Julia whipped up some hors d'oeuvre while Chris and John set up candles and tables. While all of this was going on, Chris had told Savannah to get ready for the evening, but not to come out until he came for her because his Dad was trying to do something nice for them since he would not be celebrating New Year's Eve with them.
After everything was set up, Chris went to retrieve Savannah and led her to the patio. Surrounding them were mason jars filled with glowing candles. There was a table set up with red candlesticks, a bottle of champagne, and a small heart-shaped box. Savannah and Chris sat down and Chris revealed that he had one more Christmas present to give Savannah. She took the heart-shaped box and opened it to see a Harrod's bear figurine. (Harrod's is a high-end store in the UK.) Savannah had no idea what this meant and thanked Chris for the figurine. Chris rolled his eyes and said to open it. When she opened it, there was the ring she had picked out over three months ago. Chris got on one knee and barely breathed out "Savannah........will you marry me?" Savannah, whom is never speechless, waited a second because she was in complete shock that this day had finally come. She did say yes and they hugged in excitement. Savannah stopped a minute and asked how he got the ring to Spain. All Chris could say was "It's a long story, but you brought it with you!"