Aaron and I met on the online dating site OKCupid. On paper, we were not a good match. The site has you fill out a questionnaire with various questions involving everything from education to employment, lifestyle to love language, political views to personality type. You answer the questions for yourself and for what you think you want in a partner and then they match your answers against other members. Our match percentage was only 64%. We obviously were not meant to be together. I was reluctant in the beginning and kept putting off a meeting with Aaron because he was SO young, and not a "good match". I was sure this wasn't going to go anywhere so I ignored him for a few weeks. Aaron was persistent (as you know) and he didn't give up. Ultimately, I gave in and we met up in person. Our first date was impromptu on a snow day in February. The roads were bad in the morning but cleared up over the course of the day. Aaron didn't have to go into school/work and with most of the city still shut down, we met up for dinner. There was an instant connection. We talked for hours. We learned that we had both been raised Mormon and our families were still active in the church. Aaron learned that I speak fluent Spanish due to working in Mexico City. We talked about our mutual love of traveling, about the places that we had been and where we wanted to go. We also talked about our differences, which are many. These differences continue to keep our relationship interesting and exciting. Being with Aaron, a musician, educator, immigrant and Democrat, has opened up a whole new world for this conservative finance guy and I love his world... and you know Aaron LOVES my world of financial budgets, planning in advance, coupons, IRAs and every other left brained activity. It really is true what they say, opposites attract. We are definitely proof of that.

In the summer of 2018 Jeff and I planned a 5-week trip to Europe and purposely scheduled stops to cities we missed out on visiting a few years ago because our passports had been stolen and we were stuck in Croatia for 3 weeks. One of the places that I’d always wanted to visit and missed out on seeing in 2016 was the Cinque Terre in Italy. I was so excited for this trip because we both were visiting this region for the first time and Italy is one of our favorite countries. The first stop was Riomaggiore, Italy. My first suspicion that something was up came when Jeff told me on our second day in Italy that he had made dinner reservations for us at a nice waterfront restaurant for that evening. I am the foodie in our relationship and I normally handle the dinner plans with having done tons of research before we arrive to a place. Why was he making dinner reservations? Hmm??? Jeff made our reservation for 7:15, but told me that he’d like to walk down to the water before dinner to take advantage of the lighting and take some photos. One of Jeff’s hobbies is photography so I trust him with this sort of thing and didn’t think twice about it. We walked down to the waterfront around 7:00 and after taking a few photos of the town we decided to get some of ourselves with the town in the background. As we usually do when we travel, we began looking for someone to take our photo. I noticed a couple close by that also appeared to be tourists taking photos and asked them if they would take our photo and in return we would do the same for them. I passed the guy my phone and he snapped a few pictures of us. He then mentioned that he had a really nice camera and that he could take a few shots on his camera and send them to us if we wanted. We had done this before as well with other couples so I immediately accepted his offer. Again, this interaction with the other couple didn’t strike me as strange because we’d done it before.

He gave us instructions on how to position ourselves for the photo and when he had us posed right where he wanted us he said “that’s perfect!” As it turns out, that was the prearranged code word that signaled Jeff to drop down to one knee to express how much he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me as his husband. I was immediately overcome with emotion and love for this beautiful man. As he was proposing, tears of joy streamed down my face, the nearby tourists were cheering and clapping, and it seemed, just for a moment, that time had slowed down. This was the happiest moment of my life and I wanted to soak up every second. After Jeff popped the question, I declared my love for him as well and accepted his proposal. He put the ring on my finger and we kissed to seal the deal which made the folks around us cheer even louder. I knew that something was up with him and I thought that he would possibly do something at dinner, but his proposal caught me by surprise and I’m glad it did because it was the most beautiful and perfect proposal. As it turned out, Ramon and Sonia were not tourists. They were a professional photographer couple that Jeff had hired to capture our engagement and after the proposal for the next hour or so they took photos of us strolling the beautiful streets of Riomaggiore as our personal photographers capturing every magical moment. The tour ended on the balcony of the apartment where we were staying that overlooked all of Riomaggiore and the water. Jeff had arranged to have flowers, bread, charcuterie, and wine waiting for us to celebrate our special moment just the two of us. We did eventually make it to our dinner reservation, but at 9:15 not 7:15. He’s very sneaky!