How do you bring an alligator hunter to tears? Drop down on one knee and ask her, “Will you marry me?”  

Jimmy Greer of Madison, MS proposed to Elizabeth Ratcliffe of Canton, MS during preparations for her family’s annual alligator hunt. Titan, their dog, helped. Around Titan’s neck was a sign reading, “Will You Marry My Daddy?”

“I started crying. I was shocked,” Ratcliffe told The Clarion-Ledger.

She said the two had been discussing marriage, but she thought he might propose on the opening weekend of archery season.

“That’s what we do, we hunt,” Ratcliffe said. “I figured that was the only time when both of the families would be there.

Gator hunts are her family’s thing, though Greer has been joining them for about five years.

His parents were at Ratcliffe’s parents’ house to take photos of the proposal. So, as Ratcliffe and her mother and sister were making sandwiches and getting things together for the hunt, Greer and her father took a brief break from prepping the boat and loading gear.

Ratcliffe’s father told everyone to come outside, then told his daughter to close her eyes and take his hand. She didn’t know what was going on. “I thought, ‘Maybe he’d gotten me a new car or a new bow,’” Ratcliffe said.

When the two stopped, her father told her to open her eyes on the count of three. She opened them to see Greer, his parents and the decorated dog.

The wedding was in October, Ratcliffe said: “We want to go on a bow hunt for our honeymoon.”

Source: The Clarion-Ledger, http://www.clarionledger.com