YFC AGM 2012: Torquay ends with a wedding proposal
It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for Yorkshire YFC member Tim Atkinson, the recent AGM in Torquay was the perfect setting to propose to his future wife.
Tim was one of the six-strong ‘Yorkie to Torkie’ team who made the 300-mile trip down to this year’s AGM on mobility scooters. But when he set off seven days earlier with a sheep and a giant potato in tow, he hoped he’d be returning home with a fiancé instead.
“I had it in my head in March, and thought about proposing at a club dinner dance, but in the end I decided to wait,” explained Tim, a tree surgeon and landscape gardener from Selby.
“I had a lot of time to think when we were travelling down – we were on the scooters eight hours a day for seven days. I missed her that much over the weekend that I decided to do it.”
Tim proposed to his girlfriend of one year, equine groom Laura Smith, at Sunday’s ‘club shirt’ night – but not before racking up a bit of Dutch courage.
“We’d been to the AGM, had a few drinks in the afternoon and then a few more that evening. At about 11.30pm I took her to a quiet spot in one of the bars and asked her.
“The first thing she said was ‘Are you drunk?’, then ‘Do you mean it?’, and then she finally said yes.
“The rest of the evening was fantastic. We went and told one of Laura’s close friends and by midnight nearly everyone knew.
Laura says she didn’t have a clue the proposal was coming, and was completely shocked when he popped the question.
“I didn’t think he was going to propose, not at all. He always said ‘I’m never getting married, I’m never getting married,’ so I was that shocked about it. Apparently he was going to do it on Saturday night (when the photo above was taken), but he bottled it!”
Considering that the couple first met at Young Farmers two years ago, it felt right to propose at a venue which had that connection, said Tim.
“YFC is something we’re both involved in and it’s a place that we’ll both always remember. I couldn’t think of a better place to do it. I had 20 of my closest friends in that building – it certainly wasn’t done quietly!”
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