Matthew Picca was about to propose to girlfriend Kayla Harrity on dock in Southport, North Carolina on Saturday evening when the unthinkable happened: he dropped the ring into the ocean.
The couple of six years was vacationing with Kayla's family when he popped the question at a waterfront bar called Old America Fish Co.
"I turned around and he was getting down on one knee," Kayla told WECT News. "As he opened the ring box, the ring fell out of the box and fell through the cracks on the deck and into the water. I didn't even get to see it before it dropped."
"I was in total shock," she told The Huffington Post. "I knew he had a great plan for the proposal and when the ring fell I was devastated. I knew we had to find the ring."
Right away, family and a group of onlookers banded together to recover the ring. Some jumped in the water in their clothes, other locals helped by bringing flashlights and goggles.
An hour and a half later, a man named Kyle Blusher found the ring.
"We were ecstatic," Kayla told HuffPost. "We couldn't have been happier!"
Everyone began cheering, and Matthew got down on bended knee for the second time that day -- this time with the ring firmly in hand.
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