Midland man surprises fianceé with secretly planned wedding
Published: February 7, 2007
Romance came nearly two weeks early for Midlander Angel Muñoz, 29.
On Feb. 3, Muñoz arrived at Kelview Heights Baptist Church for what she thought was a bridal shower.
Little did she know she’d be donning a hand-stitched wedding gown as soon as the last present was opened.
“We opened the gifts and my boss’ daughter said, ‘Can I tell her, can I tell her?’ ” Muñoz recalled.
“She said, ‘This is not only your bridal shower, this is your wedding day.’”
While the wedding came as a total surprise to Muñoz, fiancé (now husband) Nick Marin and boss Darilyn Selby had spent weeks planning it.
“Angel, being a young mother of three boys, kept intending to get married in February but we noticed she wasn’t preparing,” said Selby, director of the day care where Muñoz works.
“My husband (David Selby) said … you all are going to have to get her married.”
Then, Selby recalled, daughter Melissa Ellis “jumped on the idea” and arranged a surprise wedding.
Planning took three weeks, Selby said — three weeks of planning and, well, silence.
“I can’t believe the trouble Nick went to keep the secret from me,” Muñoz would say later. “I was really, really, really, really surprised.”
It was doubly surprising because Marin also had to keep the secret from the couple’s total of six children - Muñoz’s sons, Domanik Muñoz, 8, Jet Laing, 6, and Elyja Laing, 4; and Marin’s daughters, Tehya, 8, Desiree, 7, and Danyelle, 3
“They would be the first ones to tell her,” he said with a laugh. “It’s been hard enough for me to keep that secret.”
It was even more challenging for Muñoz’s mother, Sylvia Macias, to keep the word mum.
“It was hard, especially for me. I have a habit of speaking what I’m thinking.
“I’d say, ‘I have to take the day off for the wedding … I mean the wedding shower.’”
Eight on a date is … great?
For Marin, meeting Angel seemed almost like happy kismet.
“The other night I was thinking about it,” he said a couple of days before the wedding.
“We have three kids each. We are three years apart. July 3 is when we met.”
That made their wedding date, Feb. 3, almost seem predestined.
“I couldn’t be happier,” he said. “It’s strange how everything happened. My relationship had gone south with my ex-wife. I had been living in San Antonio and I moved back home and had to get started all over again.
“My mom said ‘You need to go to church, you need to go to church.’ So I went to a church picnic and I met Angel.”
Marin said he surprised Muñoz by asking her and her boys to go with him and his girls to a movie.
“She said, ‘Nobody’s ever asked me that.’ ” he recalled. “And I said, ‘You got kids and I got kids. That’s the only way this will work.’”
Muñoz, however, had a different opinion at the time.
“I thought he was crazy,” she recalled. “I told everybody at work,’This guy ain’t right!’”
She ended up having a good time at the movie, which she thinks was “Cars.”
And so did all of their boys and girls.
“The kids ended up playing through the whole movie,” she said. “They got along like brothers and sisters.”
You may now drag the bride
Little did she know that, six months later, the children would become true brothers and sisters.
For Muñoz, the surprise wedding almost seemed like the only way the ceremony could work.
While she said not everyone would be up for such a shock, she said she was relieved and grateful not to have to plan a wedding.
“It was perfect for me,” she said. “My family knew I was going to have a hard time planning. I was a single mom and working overtime and going to church … I didn’t really have time.”
The event was masterminded by Selby, Muñoz’s boss at Kelview Heights’ day care center. Muñoz has worked there for three years.
“Everything was done for us,” Macias said. “We weren’t going to be able to give her that and the day care where she works has given her a dream come true.”
That said, Muñoz did have a bit of a problem when faced with that looooong march down the aisle.
“They played the wedding march and I forgot how to walk,” she said. “My brothers were basically dragging me. They thought I was going to pass out because my knees locked. I literally forgot how to walk.”
She eventually made it to the altar.
And when she did, Marin was there — resplendent in jeans, a shirt and a tie.
“They wanted me to dress casual,” he said, “So I wouldn’t give it away.”
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