Songfacts®:

• Thomas Rhett met his wife Lauren in grade school and married her in 2012. However, there was a time when they both nearly tied the knot with other people. Rhett explained at his iHeartRadio album release party, why, in spite of the romantic-sounding title, fans should not use this tune at their nuptials.
  
  "That's the song you [definitely don't] want to play at a wedding," he laughed. "That was basically my 'What if' song - there was a time [Lauren and I] dated and broke up forever and almost married other people... That's a very morbid thing to write about, but it's one of my favorite songs on the record, I'm such a sucker for a sad song."
• Rhett explained why he decided to include a song on Life Changes that is so far from his life.
  
  "'Marry Me,' really, in its broken-down self, is basically a 'what if' song," he said. "If anyone knows my story with my wife, there was a time where we both dated other people forever, and if I had not ever gone up and told Lauren how I felt about her, I would definitely have already been invited to her wedding, and I would be sitting in the back, probably getting trashed. And so this song is kind of like that 'What if I had never said anything? This is more than likely what my life would have been,' which is a very morbid thought, but it was fun to write. Just don't use it in your wedding, for sure."
• Directed by TK McKamy and filmed in both Nashville and Birmingham, Alabama, the song's music video is shot from the perspective of a young man looking back on the girl from his childhood that got away. Rhett admitted that while the song is not his and Lauren's story, it could have been.
  
  "If I had never told Lauren how I felt about her, I probably would have been at her wedding watching her marry someone else," he said. "So, I wanted to capture that feeling of heartbreak in this video — and this really hits me in the gut."
• Thomas Rhett penned "Marry Me" with Jesse Frasure, Ashley Gorely and Shane McAnally. He explained the story behind the song to The Boot:
  
  "We wrote that song from a place that could have been my life. Everybody has those moments in life where they can either go left or go right, and if you go left, you'll never know what could have been in the other direction.
  
  That's where I was at a certain point with my now-wife, Lauren. The song was written out of this space where I knew that if I had never told Lauren how I felt about her, I probably have been invited to her wedding and would have watched her marry somebody else. I probably wouldn't have been quite as sad as the guy in the music video for the song, but it would definitely still have wrecked me."
• Rhett explained why he believes the video has a happy ending. "I think when you fall in love with somebody at a young age like I did, that sort of thing lingers with you for a long time, even if it doesn't work out. At the end of the music video for 'Marry Me,' I wanted to close in on that 'Nicholas Sparks moment' and really give the viewers a positive ending. So in my mind, I think the girl in the video left the wedding. I think she came and told him she loved him, and now they're together, wherever they are."