Gulf Drive Cafe Wedding

Kristin and Filipe tied the knot during their Bradenton Beach wedding at Gulf Drive Cafe.

How They Met

We first met each other during a wedding. My friend from the Fire Academy invited me last minute to his wedding, and had told me that he had a one single spot available in the count, so I could go but was not able to invite a date, in which I was fine with that since I wasn’t seeing anyone at the time.

We had all met in the Hard Rock in Tampa the day before the wedding to have a good night out after their rehearsal dinner, there is where I first saw Kristin among the other bridesmaids. I came up to the party to introduce my self while they were all at the bar. I had spoken to everyone and went up to introduce my self to Kristin and a few other girls, Kristin had said hello and immediately turned her head away, and on that note I went to enjoy the night.

Wedding day… With the ceremony done all the guests were celebrating in the dinning hall. I had spotted Kristin and after a cocktail I got the courage to try to have a conversation with her once again; As I approached her she had turned her body and gaze away from my direction, so again I took the hint and went on my way. As the night went on per request of the groom I ended up staying for the after-party in the Hotel, having too many drinks I had to stay at the Hotel for the night. The Hotel had no available rooms anymore so the staff provided a cot for me to sleep the night in one of the rooms that the groom had arranged. To my surprise the room they had arranged for me was the room that Kristin was in as well, she had opened the door looked at me and turned away to go to bed with out a word spoken.
About two months had gone by since the wedding. While browsing one of the dating apps, I had seen Kristin in one of them. I deleted her profile from my browsing page since the three times that I had a chance to talk with her she had shut me down. After a few days she poked me to get my attention. This allowed us to start up a conversation, which eventually led to our relationship.

The Proposal

For the proposal I had already spoken to her father months prior to me asking. Her family all lives in Chicago and in the month of January they came for a vacation and I wanted to have family all together for this moment. Her family was down in Florida for 2 weeks and I had to figure out a way to get her family and mine together, the problem was that Kristin, my family and I all had different work schedules. The only day available ended up being a day where I had to go to work and ended up calling out for the rest of my shift.

As I left work Kristin had informed me that her mother was thinking about not going to dinner and to stay home with the grandkids. I had Kristin convince her to go by choosing Chacha Coconuts restaurant which is one of her favorites to eat. As I arrived at Kristin’s house something horrible had happened. Tyler’s (Kristin’s brother in-law) family had gotten into a 3 car accident up in Chicago, his mother, father, and sister were rear ended by a semi truck and the whole family ended up being transported by EMS to different hospitals. Tyler was distracted and busy on the phone trying to figure out what had happened and I had lost hope in the night going through. Tyler comes out of the room and tells everyone that we should all go out for dinner and that nothing could be done from here in Florida.

In the restaurant I had decided to do the proposal after we all had drinks in our hands, unfortunately Tyler’s phone went off right when the drinks had come, the call lasted the whole night at the restaurant making my anxiety for the moment to ask even more intense as our time there was running out. We were sitting at the table with the check already down waiting for Tyler to come back. As Tyler returned everyone was interested in finding out what had happened to his family in which he replied that “everyone was in the hospital no one was very critical, so let’s forget about that right now and enjoy tonight”. This was my only chance !!

The restaurant had live music for the evening, I pretended to go up to the musician to give him a tip. Showing him a $20 bill the musician got excited and I said that it came at a price to accept the 20$. I wanted to use his microphone to propose to my girlfriend, he became so happy for me and allowed me to use his stand. I then proceed to say a bunch of lovi dovi things about her and my love for her, that the place was not so important as the fact that our family was all there to celebrate the moment with us. I had put the microphone down and walked up to her, asked her to stand, and with me on one knee I proposed ! !