Joshua Renaud shocked his fiancée Brittany Hunter by popping the question with assistance from her four kids, as shown in a video posted on TikTok.
Josh Renaud’s mother was asked to marry by the guy he names “dad” when he was just four years old. He claims that in addition to giving his mom a ring during the proposal, his father also gave him a little gold band and made a lifelong commitment to support him and his mother.
“Since that moment, I always knew that if I were to ever be blessed with the opportunity to propose to a woman who was also a mother, I would do it the same way my dad did,” Renaud, 38, told PEOPLE.
Renaud knew immediately after meeting Brittany Hunter, 34, and her four kids that he would ask her kids to marry him if he ever got engaged—just like his father had done years before. Renaud carried out his plan precisely on November 11th. With a ring for his future bride and each of her four children, he dropped down on one knee and proposed to Hunter.
Renaud is shown next to Hunter’s four children in a TikTok video commemorating the memorable occasion, all of them are sporting shirts that ask, “Can we call Josh dad?” Hunter bursts into tears the moment she enters the room and realizes what is going on.
Later in the video, Renaud addresses Hunter, saying, “Brittany, you have shown me a kind of love that I never knew I was capable of feeling. I would be honored to be your husband and these kids’ dad.”
Renaud goes down on one knee and poses the identical query to each of her children after posing the inquiry. In the process, he presents them each a ring and opens a box. “The pure love and excitement in their eyes hit me like a freight train,” he continues.
“I was in complete shock!” Hunter goes on. “We had been talking about getting married, but I had no clue when he would really pop the question. I looked around and realized instantly what was going on. I could no longer feel my legs, so I rapidly skimmed the shirts and wondered whether they would be able to transport me across the room.”
“I knew that I was walking across the room to the man who would become not only my husband but also dad to my four precious children,” she says. “Seeing the love in their eyes and the pure excitement on their faces, I very quickly became overwhelmed with emotion.”
She continues, “I did not want to miss a single word, so I was trying so hard not to cry when the tears started to form. Three years ago, my husband, the children’s father, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving the children and I grieving greatly. I never imagined that I would be able to meet someone who shared his unconditional love for us. Josh then entered our life and once more brought that type of love and pleasure to us.”
Renaud remembers that Hunter’s children were thrilled when he originally informed them he was about to pop the question. “The kids were more excited than I ever could have imagined,” Renaud recounts. “The way their smiles radiated, and the amount of love I saw in their eyes was something that I was not expecting.”
He claims that after just a few months of dating, her children had already asked him if he would be their father.
According to the couple, they informed the children that it would “take some more time for them to figure that out.” Still, they continue, it didn’t stop them from asking.
“Their consistent questions about wanting me to be their dad were starting to weigh on my heart pretty heavily, and by that point, Brittany and I were very much in love and had been talking about marriage often,” he recalls.
“I can’t remember specifically when the idea to have the kids wear the shirts for the proposal popped into my head, but it was somewhere around that time.”
Renaud adds that his mother began wearing the gold band his father used to propose to him on her wrist with her own wedding ring when he outgrew it.
@jrenaud03 Part 2… The Proposal! Check the comments for more details… #engagement#family#kids#proposal#proposingwithkids#fyp#fyp#fypageシ#foryou#foryoupage#fypage#husband#wife#fiance#dad#stepdad#dadlife#happy#bestdayevere ♬ Love – Revember
His mother presented Hunter the gold band, which had been on her finger for more than thirty years, as her wedding band just moments after he proposed to her.
“It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life,” Renaud recalls.