Sometime in the late summer of 2023, I was looking for more church friends, and, at a young adult happy hour put on at a local parish, upon hearing that I worked at a certain aerospace company, another attendee mentioned that I should meet this girl named Emma. "She's really cute, super Catholic, and works at the same company!", I was told. But given that this mythical Emma wasn't in attendance, and said company had thousands of employees, I didn't give it too much thought at the time. A year and a half later, on January 11, 2025, our local Catholic networking org was putting on their annual gala. A friend's date bailed on him, and he asked if I wanted his extra ticket. Never one to turn down free food, I decided to come with. After Mass, I walked into Hanley Hall (fittingly where our reception will be hosted) to our table and promptly met Jessi (Emma's future maid of honor). Of course, after mentioning working at a certain aerospace company, she said I should meet Emma, pointed me towards her, and the rest is history...just kidding, I'm not going to skip this. Emma and I hit it off right away, thankfully talking only briefly about our jobs before chatting about where we're from (not from Phoenix), where we went to school (also nowhere near Phoenix), and so on. I realized instantly that this is a girl whose number I, without a doubt, had to get before the end of the night. It was clear from our first conversations that Emma and I had remarkable chemistry, and our chatting soon turned to flirting, then to dancing, then to coming back to each other time and time again as the night went on, then finally to me asking for Emma's number and a promise that "we should hang out sometime". (Smooth and incredibly suave, I know.) At the end of the night, we joked that we'd message each other on Teams at work the next week, and went our ways. The next day, I came to my senses, and I texted Emma that we should skip the Teams message so that I could just take her out to dinner. That Friday, I picked her up from her apartment, and we headed to Postino for some bruschetta and beverages. Our first date will always stick in my mind for many reasons, but before Emma, I can't say I'd ever gone out with a girl who gifted me a quarter loaf of homemade sourdough on the first date. And I must say, the next day, I cut a slice of that bread, and it was without a doubt the best bread I'd ever tasted. (Now, I'm not saying that I'm marrying Emma because she makes good bread, but I can't say it didn't contribute!) Then, as our a first date turned into a second date, a third date, mini golf, cooking, hiking, and volunteering together, our time together began to take shape, and we made our relationship official on February 27, 2025. Emma and I, as two people with more than our fair share of dating experiences, shared from the get-go our desire to be intentional in our relationship, to purposefully discern whether we were called to marriage, and especially marriage to each other. Only a month or two into our discernment, Emma asked whether I would like to join her on a vacation to Paris and Reims, France, to visit some family friends of hers. And before we knew it, I was telling Emma I loved her for the first time, while we sat on the banks of the Seine underneath the lights of the Eiffel Tower. I never realized what people meant by "when you know you know" until dating Emma. Needless to say, I couldn't even wait a full year before buying a ring, setting up a picnic on the Salt River, getting down on one knee, and asking Emma to marry me. (She said yes!)