Deciding what to get your fiancée for a wedding present can be a struggle for most men. But for Charles Owens, 59, of Albertville, Ala., the decision was an easy one.
He gave his fiancée Brenda Colvin, 52, a hot pink 1999 Freightliner.
Owen, who worked for Builder Trucking in Memphis, Tenn., for 25 years, recently returned to his hometown and opened his own trucking company, Lake City Trucking.
Even though their families had known each other for years, Owens and Colvin did not meet until February. With the encouragement of her sister, Eunice Bryant, Brenda decided she’d take a chance, and she went to dinner with Owens. As the old saying goes, the rest is history. They fell in love, and after a whirlwind five weeks, he proposed.
Shortly after the engagement, Colvin would receive her wedding present.
John Kelsey, close friend of the couple and driver of the hot pink 1999 Freightliner, poses to take a snapshot with the newlyweds.
Colvin was in the middle of her workday at Benefit Elect, a third party administrator of 125 and 401K plans, when Owens called. “Hey baby doll,” he said. “I bought you your wedding gift. Come to my office after work and you can see it.” Colvin rushed over to his Lake City Trucking office to find her fiancé standing next to a hot pink 18-wheeler. “I was shocked,” Colvin said. “I was totally not expecting it.”
The Freightliner is leased from Builder, and is driven by close friend, John Kelsey. Colvin says she and John remain in contact while he is on the road through e-mail and telephone.
Colvin said that she had never considered getting into the trucking, but the unique wedding gift made her an instant businesswoman. She received her first direct deposit from her new truck a few weeks ago. The first thing she said to Owens when she saw it was, “Can we buy another truck?”
The couple was married on June 15, with the pink truck parked outside. Friends and family members who had not yet seen the eye-catching tractor, took snapshots of the happy couple in front of it.
“Everyone wanted to see it,” Brenda said. “It was definitely part of the wedding.”
