Man’s marriage proposal goes terribly wrong: Police, machine guns and a lost ring

Think your marriage proposal was romantic? Did it involve a beautiful beach, a private sunset dinner and “I love you” spelled out in rose petals?

Yes? That’s nice. But did it involve Mexican police, a machine gun and renting scuba gear to retrieve the missing engagement ring at the bottom of the Atlantic?

Because Ryan Houston’s did when he proposed to his high school sweetheart, Laura Yearout, and no matter how amazing you think your engagement story is, this couple from Weaverville, N.C. has you trumped in the “that’s unbelievable” department.

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But first, let’s backtrack and get a little context.

"I spent about three months planning this proposal," Houston tells ABC News. "I sold my motorcycle to pay for the ring and cashed in some savings. I really went all out and researched the ring and the diamonds. I researched online for weeks to find the perfect resort."

That perfect resort ended up being Secrets Aura in Cozumel, Mexico – a popular tourist island off the country’s east coast.

Houston, who owns a landscaping company, planned the Jan. 9 proposal down to the last detail, spending buckets of cash and working meticulously with the hotel’s event coordinator.

She promised him they’d be the only souls on the beach that evening and everything from the romantic music he’d requested to the clear view of the sunset would be on perfect display.

So when he took his 28-year-old girlfriend to the corresponding spot, Houston was frustrated to find at least a dozen people milling around on the pier. To make matters worse, a yacht had blocked the sunset and hotel workers were still racing to put the dinner together that should have been a surprise.

Then the music played at the wrong time and when the 30-year-old looked up at the yacht, all he could see was “a man in a Speedo smiling at him.” That’s when everything really started to go wrong.

"The whole thing is pretty much blown, not going like it's supposed to so my nerves are just shot," he tells the news network.

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Sometimes in tense moments, bad decisions happen.

The first was Yearout’s suggestion that they untie the yacht. It’s hard to fathom why they thought this was a good idea, but Houston went down to loosen its straps and gave it a push.

The Speedo-wearing man resurfaced, yelling that it was his boss’s boat and that he was just watching it. Feeling bad, Houston helped the man retie it to the dock.

The evening now shot, the couple got up to head back toward the hotel lobby. Their route would be diverted.

"Just about that time, we see a Mexican police truck pull in and they tell me police want to speak to me about damaging a yacht and I'm thinking, 'You've got to be kidding me,'" he says, adding that the boat’s owner was "jumping up and down mad insisting they arrest me."

Machine gun pointed at him, police handcuff the thwarted Romeo and prepare to haul him to their vehicle. Before they can get him into the truck, Houston instructed Yearout to remove his valuables, including one inside his shirt that he hadn’t gotten the chance to give her yet.

"There on the pier, while I've got my hands cuffed behind my back, she reaches inside my shirt, feels the ring and puts two and two together," he says. "She gasps and then pulls the ring real hard and the safety pin pops. The ring comes flying out of the shirt and then out of her fingers. It bounces off the dock and goes in the ocean."

It turns out the yacht belonged to one of the hotel’s owners, which explained the police hysteria. Once they determined that there was no damage to the pricy boat, Houston was released and the hotel upgraded the couple to their penthouse suite.

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Only Houston didn’t have time to enjoy it, knowing there was a 1.87-karat diamond engagement ring somewhere along the ocean floor. In the first bit of good luck he’d had so far that night, Houston happened to be an experienced diver. Strapping on a wetsuit and some scuba gear, flashlight in tow, he immediately set out in search of the piece of jewelry for which he’d sold his bike.

"After about two hours, I spotted a sparkle and dove down for it. This time it was actually the ring," he says.

"I walked over to her dripping wet in my wetsuit, kneeled down – she didn't know I'd found it – and I kneeled down and proposed to her on the pier, in the middle of the night, in my scuba gear," he says. "She said yes."

Of course she did. Can you imagine if she’d said, “Uh, let me think about it?”

The wedding is set for July 5 and Houston says the hotel has offered to host it for free along with a complimentary two-week stay. They’re actually considering it.

The owner may want to keep his boat on a different pier for the entire month just in case.

Watch the below ABC news video about the proposal gone wrong.