We're getting married!

We met at work, sitting in cubicles right next to each other. What started as quick chats on Skype, and later on Teams, slowly turned into full conversations throughout the day. We realized we had a lot in common, especially our taste in music. At one point, we found ourselves reciting the lyrics to Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” back and forth over Teams, laughing as we typed, “He was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it any more obvious?” Somewhere along the way, the Sinclair dino plushie on Daniel’s desk mysteriously made its way over to Annie’s. She insisted it moved because it loved her more. Daniel never really got it back, and we think that says everything about how our story turned out.

We had already built a life together before the proposal ever happened. We bought a house, talked about our future, and knew marriage was part of the plan. We had a cruise planned, and friends and family kept hinting that it might happen there. Annie convinced herself it wouldn’t since she knew they just ordered the rings and were not in yet. She thought "there's no way Daniel would propose without the ring". On September 22, 2024, after dinner on the cruise, we went back to our room and stepped out onto the balcony to relax and watch the sunset. It felt like any other quiet moment together. Then Daniel pulled out a ring-shaped object from his wallet and asked, “Will you marry me?” Annie’s first response was, “Are you serious?” What he was holding wasn’t a diamond ring. It was a small ring-shaped pine needle. Annie made this years earlier. Surprised, she asked, “You still have that?” Daniel reminded her that during the walks they went on back in 2020, she randomly had picked up the pine needle, shaped it into a ring, and jokingly told him that when he proposed, he had to use that ring. Daniel knew she was the one and kept it all this time. And on that balcony, with the sunset behind us and a tiny ring-shaped pine needle between us, we got engaged.