A loving boyfriend came up with a one-of-a-kind proposal for his girlfriend, filling a museum with paintings from each year of their relationship before getting down on one knee next to a portrait of him proposing.
Brendon Dohno, 26, from Nashville, Tennessee, started dating his girlfriend Kaitlyn Lawrence, 25, in 2015, when the pair were still in high school.
Brendon said the couple had moved from childhood into adulthood together, and he couldn’t imagine his life without Kaitlyn going forward.
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With so many memories from such a young age, Brendon called on another high school friend, Natalie Hensely of Natsy Art, to help him with his unique proposal idea.
Brendon tasked Natalie with painting a portrait for each year he and Kaitlyn had been together. He planned to hang the paintings in the Cedarhurst Center for the Arts in Mount Vernon, Illinois, where the couple attended open mic nights as children.
The 26-year-old also asked his sister for help, who drew up a list of important life events that he and Kaitlyn had experienced—moving into their first house, graduating from college together—as well as special, more intimate moments, like writing a song for Kaitlyn to ask her to homecoming.
Natalie started discussing the proposal with Brendon in January 2024, and the venue was booked for October 25.
Ahead of the big surprise, Natalie created eight portraits of past events, including one of Brendon getting down on one knee and proposing in the arts center. In it, Kaitlyn is wearing the dress that the 26-year-old thought she would wear on the day.
To get Kaitlyn to the museum, Brendon had the venue’s events planner call her to say the family would be attending a banquet on that day and that she had been invited.
Then, on the day itself, Kaitlyn arrived to find family at the event, sipping champagne and holding programs that explained the backstory of each painting.
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The final painting was in the ballroom, which Brendon and Kaitlyn then entered alone while their family watched on through the glass walls.
There, the couple dances to “Honeybee” by Steam Powered Giraffe, a song they had bonded over when they were younger before Brendon gets down on one knee in front of his proposal painting.
The moment was captured on video, which Natalie later shared on social media to a loving response.
Brendon and Kaitlyn plan to marry on November 28, 2026, their 11th anniversary. Natalie will paint the big day.
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Brendon said of the proposal: “It’s impossible to put into words how I felt when I saw her face.
“She looked breathtaking and walking with her through all of these great memories of our life was such a wonderful experience.
“It’s so funny that you don’t always know what moments are important until you look back on them.
“We got to the last painting, which I had asked Natalie not to show me along with the others, so that Kait and I were both surprised, and it just drove home that every little movie date and homecoming invite and even all the tiny wonderful moments that I didn’t include because I could’ve done 100 paintings and still not gotten to everything.
“They all just feel like isolated, nice moments until you get there and you see that you were writing a story the whole time and it has a very happy ending.”
