Tyler Burtscher hid the engagement ring he’d purchased for Kenzie Hamilton in his cowboy boots for three months. He’d taken her scouting for a ring in his Omaha, Nebraska, hometown to see what she might like, and they found it in a jewelry store. His mother picked it up for him and shipped it to Dallas so he could surprise her.

But it took awhile for him to determine how he’d pop the question to Kenzie, whom he’d met at the University of Kansas two years prior. “I’m slow-paced—when I make a decision, I take my time, and Kenzie is more ‘this is what I want; I’m doing it now,’ ” Tyler says. “We balance each other out.”

He and Kenzie had casually dated for more than a year during college before she found a job in Dallas—and he ended up in the same city four months later. “She likes to say I followed her,” Tyler laughs. For their first official date night, he took her to the rooftop of the NYLO Dallas South Side hotel. It only seemed fitting that he would propose in the same spot, and he popped the question at sunset a few days before Christmas 2016. A celebration at The Adolphus’ French Room followed with their parents, who had flown in for the occasion.

The fresh Texas transplants wanted to wed at an exciting venue that was “something different—a place our guests could experience,” Kenzie says. The winning spot: The Perot Museum of Nature and Science. Kenzie had always known she wanted neutral tones interwoven in her wedding design. “I like clean looks and classic flowers—simple but elegant,” she says. They also aimed for “a formal wedding but laid-back, lighthearted, and fun,” Tyler says. They tapped 316 Design Source to help play off the museum exterior’s textured concrete panels. Cloudlike arrangements of roses and hydrangeas framed the aisle and dressed the reception tables. “They are so classy and wonderful, and the style of their wedding spoke to their personalities—it was intimate and refined,” says Rexanne Foster of 316 Design Source.

They arranged for the cocktail hour to be held in the dinosaur exhibit; meanwhile, Kenzie and Tyler shared a quick dinner secretly overlooking the guests. “I didn’t think I would cherish it as much as I did, because we didn’t sit down the rest of the night,” Kenzie says.

The rest of the day’s events went off without a hitch, save for a tuxedo snafu—the groom’s and groomsmen’s unmarked suits led to frantic swapping—and Tyler’s daylong nerves nearly got the best of him during the ceremony. “I locked my knees and almost went down,” he says. 

But that didn’t keep him from executing the ceremony’s most poignant moment. Though he and Kenzie planned to purchase her wedding band as a one-year anniversary gift, he had secretly asked a friend to pick up a band at that same Omaha jewelry shop and drive it in just in time for the wedding. “When the pastor did the exchange of rings, Tyler put the band on and I was gasping and laughing, and he smiled,” Kenzie says. “It was really special.”

“I like clean looks and classic flowers—simple but elegant.” —Kenzie Hamilton