ResortHatch

Using the pillowy soft beach at Sandals Dunn’s River to cushion his right knee, Justin knelt down to face two beautiful sights: the Caribbean Sea and the girl he wanted to marry.

“I can’t imagine a more perfect place to ask someone for the rest of their life,” Justin said a few weeks after Fallon gave an emphatic “Yes!” With the help of the Sandals staff, Justin had surprised his notoriously hard-to-surprise girlfriend.

“I turned and saw him on his knee, holding the ring and … I don’t remember much else,” Fallon says.

Both educators, Fallon and Justin had come to Sandals Dunn’s River with Justin’s brother and sister-in-law to celebrate the start of summer vacation. They’d sleep in and eat late breakfasts next to the ocean. They’d soak in the pools, plant their toes in the sand, and melt into the Caribbean.

Fallon thought of it as a weeklong recess. Justin saw it as a bold step into the future.

“We’d been to Sandals Grande Antigua and Sandals Barbados, so when I thought about proposing, my mind came back to the beach at Sandals,” Justin says.

Keeping it a secret became his biggest challenge. He told Fallon the purpose of the trip would be a post-school exhale, a week to be schedule-free. The ring? It traveled in his brother’s backpack to Jamaica, 1,400 miles from the home where this love story almost never even began.

 Classroom Crush

Fallon and Justin grew up in the same small Maryland community, playing sports and hanging out with teenage friends. In a town of 4,300 people, they could not have been very far apart at any given time. They graduated in separate years from separate high schools and went their separate ways to college.

“We’ve looked back,” Fallon says, “and we’re pretty sure we never crossed paths.”

It wasn’t until ten years after Justin graduated that they finally met, back in the town where they grew up. In a classroom, to be exact. It’s one of those details that seems so strange. Heck, Justin hadn’t planned to return home or to be a teacher.

“I thought I’d be a veterinarian before I shifted to teaching,” he says.

Fallon didn’t plan to work in education either.

“I wanted to be a physician’s assistant. But then I took a gap year before graduate school and shadowed different professionals. When I shadowed my mom, who’s a special education teacher, something clicked.”

It double-clicked when Fallon’s mom, who assisted students in Justin’s science class, had to find a substitute for the last month of school while she recovered from surgery.

“Fallon doesn’t think I remember, but I do,” Justin says. “Her mom brought her to my classroom and said, ‘Justin, this is my daughter, she’s your assistant for the next month.’”

Turns out, mom was introducing Fallon to a career and her future husband. At the time, however, Fallon and Justin harbored the same thoughts.

Fallon: “He’s cute and great with kids, but we need to keep it professional.”

Justin: “She’s attractive, but don’t dip your pen in the company ink. It can get messy.”

They waited until the end of the school year to go out for a drink. The drink turned into second and third dates. Which turned into Thanksgiving dinner with Justin’s family. Which turned into vacations at Sandals.

“I knew she was the one,” Justin says. “And I knew Sandals would be the place to ask her to marry me.”

 Pressure Relief

Justin had some help with the asking, or at least with the surprise part. He’d shared his general plan with Sandals representatives before traveling to Dunn’s River: I want to surprise Fallon with an engagement ring on the beach.

“They sounded as excited about it as me,” he says, “and that gave me some peace of mind.”

After checking into Sandals Dunn’s River, Justin followed the gameplan by booking a photo shoot for the next day.

“That isn’t something he’d normally do,” Fallon says. “He looked at me and said, ‘Oh, we’ll have great professional pictures.’ It made sense.”

Fallon didn’t know the photographer, Chris, had become Justin’s confidante, privately telling Justin, “Just relax and follow my lead.”

On the day of the photo shoot, Chris first led Justin and Fallon to a garden.

“This is beautiful,” he said between clicks. “Now let’s work our way down to the beach.”

Next to the ocean, he took a few solo shots of Justin to loosen his nerves. Then it was Fallon’s turn.

“OK, Fallon, face the ocean for me. Nice. Nice. Now turn around.”

And that’s when she saw Justin’s knee in the sand and a ring in his hand. She could practically hear his heart beating over the words he’d been rehearsing: Will you …

“That’s all I remember,” Fallon says.

“Massive relief,” Justin says of his emotion. “And joy. Pure joy.”

 The Meaning of Living

They had come to celebrate the end of school, and now the celebrations multiplied. They celebrated the engagement with a dinner along the ocean. The next day they celebrated Justin’s birthday at the pool bar. Two days after that, they celebrated the anniversary of Justin’s brother and sister-in-law on the beach, in different pools, and everywhere in between. These were not celebrations that start at four and stop at nine.

“We were just … living,” Fallon says. “Being together, relaxing in the moment. And I had this ring. It’s a comforting feeling that doesn’t stop.”

The fun times became teachable moments that transformed Justin’s perspective, even after returning to Maryland — and back to school.

“We were reminded at Sandals not to worry. We have each other, and at the end of the day we know everything is going to be all right.”