One Colorado man sealed the deal with more than a ring.
Vinny Capaldo-Smith tricked his now-fiancée, Brooke Wodark, into inking on him her answer to his marriage-proposal.
The moment was caught on camera as tattoo artist Capaldo-Smith, 30, talked Wodark, 23, into tattooing a heart on his ankle. Never having done a tattoo before, she told ABC News it was “nerve-racking” because “you’re about to put a needle in somebody,” but little did she know what would happen next.
Capaldo-Smith lifted up his shorts to reveal a hidden tattoo he had gotten the day before that read, “Will you marry me?” with boxes for Wodark to check “yes” or “no.” Overjoyed, she marked “yes” after crying tears of joy.
“I had no idea. In my mind I was just scared to tattoo in general,” Wodark recalled. “He told me I was going to tattoo a heart on his ankle and I was freaking out. When he whipped out the ring I just started crying. I looked at it for a second and I was like, ‘No way. Are you kidding? That’s not a real tattoo.’”
Capaldo-Smith said the tattoo was actually a drawing Wodark had drawn a few months prior on a restaurant’s paper tablecloth that he thought was cute.
“It was an idea from elementary school from when you pass somebody a note to check off the boxes,” the groom-to-be said of his inspiration for the tattoo. “She drew it one night at dinner on a paper tablecloth, and I took a picture of it that night.”
Despite Capaldo-Smith being a tattoo artist, Wodark said she never expected a proposal like this.
“I really didn’t see this coming at all which, looking back, I should have maybe expected a tattoo of some sort,” she said with a laugh. “I had no idea it was going to happen that day. I was just over-the-top ecstatic. It was everything I ever wanted and more.”
The lovebirds from Denver are planning to wed in fall 2018 but aren’t sure if they’ll choose to tattoo rings on their wedding fingers to carry on the tradition.
“I don’t know if she would tattoo her finger but I’ve thought about it,” said Capaldo-Smith. “It would have to go over or around my other tattoos on my left finger.”