Area man proposes during bridal fashion show
GERMAN TOWNSHIP – This is a week Rebecca Immel will never forget, and a Valentine’s Day that’s sure to be extra special. Nathan Flesher, her boyfriend of 11/2 years, proposed Sunday in front of a few hundred people gathered at Anthony’s Lakeside Party Center.
Immel, 18, of Hopwood was modeling a wedding gown during a bridal fashion show for the 3rd annual Wedding Extravaganza when Flesher took the microphone from the announcer and publicly proclaimed his love for Immel.
“You know I love you with all of my heart,” the 19-year-old Uniontown man said, getting down on one knee before asking a surprised Immel to marry him.
She said yes, and he slid a diamond ring on her finger.
“You wanted a wedding show, so we gave you one,” the announcer said, as the audience rose to give Immel and Flesher a standing ovation.
Family and friends snapped pictures and wiped away tears, taking turns to congratulate the newly engaged couple.
Immel couldn’t keep her eyes off her fianc? or the sparkling diamond on her ring finger.
“It’s my ring,” she said. “I can’t believe it. It doesn’t seem real yet.”
Immel’s mother, Robin, said Flesher approached her husband, Don, two weeks ago and asked for permission to marry his daughter.
Robin Immel said she knew Flesher planned to ask her daughter to marry him during the fashion show and said it was torture trying to keep it a secret from her daughter.
“It almost drove me crazy,” she said.
The young couple, according to the bride-to-be’s mother, met when they were both students at Laurel Highlands High School.
Flesher said he decided to ask Immel to marry him in front of an audience after he found out she would be modeling wedding gowns in the upcoming fashion show.
“As soon as I found out, I knew that’s what I was going to do,” he said.
Flesher’s mother, Connie, said she and her husband, Charles, are happy for their son and future daughter-in-law.
“I’m so excited for them,” she said. “He couldn’t wait to do this.”
Flesher, a pre-med major at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, and Immel, a nursing major at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, will spend Valentine’s Day on separate campuses.
However, Flesher and Immel said it will still be a special day for both of them – their first holiday as an engaged couple.
“We couldn’t have handpicked a better young man for Becca,” Robin Immel said. “He treats her royally.”