In June 2021, Mr. Dansby surprised Ms. Combs with a proposal with help from her former boss at Harvest Hands, who invited Ms. Combs to what she thought was a volunteer appreciation dinner on June 27. The invitation was a ruse, and when Ms. Combs arrived at the event, she was shocked to see Mr. Dansby and a heart made of rose petals on the floor, beneath a banner that read, “I choose you.”
“It was magical,” Ms. Combs said.
The couple wed on Jan. 29 at Long Hollow Gardens, a vineyard in Gallatin, Tenn. Mark Irving, the pastor of Fellowship Nashville church, officiated before roughly 160 guests. They included the bride’s parents and the groom’s mother, father and stepmother. (Both Mr. Dansby’s mother and stepmother later danced with him at the reception; “The only thing better than one mom is two,” Ms. Combs recalled the D.J. saying.)
At the ceremony, guests were seated in a circle around the couple, a setup Ms. Combs said allowed them “to really feel the intimacy of our community around us.”
The reception that followed did not have a seated dinner; instead, attendees mingled with each other and the couple, who wanted to “feel in touch with our guests,” said Ms. Combs, who credited their wedding planner, Josiah Carr of Ninth & Everett, with creating the ambience for the whole event.
In lieu of a guest book, the couple rented a phone booth, where guests could record voice messages for Mr. Dansby and Ms. Combs, who moved into the bride’s home in Nashville after the wedding.
Ms. Combs’s students also played a part in the festivities by writing questions and thoughts about marriage on pieces of paper that were displayed at the venue.
“Some of the questions were really genuine,” she said, “and some were really funny.”
