We're getting married!

We met in September of 2023, when I started a new job with The St. Louis Children's Choirs (I held the important role of door monitor, and I was the best door monitor the Choirs ever had). By the start of October, I was requested to work administrative hours in addition to my door monitoring duties, a big ask in my opinion. My first task was to put together a filing cabinet. I remember my new coworker, the first Hallie I had ever met, asking if I needed any assistance. She claimed to have spent 45 minutes to putting an identical cabinet together. I confidently asserted that I would not need assistance, and would in fact beat her time. This was the first foolish move in path paved with inaccurate notions. Hallie immediately started a stopwatch, and my fate was sealed. I proceeded to fumble with this cabinet for 2 hours. 120 minutes. I tripled her time. She was very eager to let me know that I had in fact not beat her time, and somehow neither of us could stop laughing about it. I learned three valuable things that day: to never doubt the abilities of Hallie Makai, to NEVER be too confident about my own abilities, and that I had found someone I needed to talk to more. She made me laugh after our first day of speaking in a way only possible from a best friend. After this day, we spent most of our time finding ways to work on tasks together. Hallie eventually became who I directly reported too, and coincidentally my job became much more fulfilling. After every workday, we would spend anywhere between 15-45 minutes in the parking lot joking, talking about life, sharing stories, and just generally enjoying each other's company. At the end of the season, Hallie announced that she would be moving alongside her parents to the mountains of Utah. I truly thought she was insane, but let it slide. I figured there must be some positive to living in Utah I had not heard of... On Thursday, June 13, we met at Coma Coffee before work. By Monday, we were officially dating (the date was retroactively set after spending the entire weekend discussing how much we enjoyed seeing each other outside of work). From there, we had two weeks to date in person. These two weeks included a 72-hour moving session in which I entered the Jones household Friday evening, and did not leave until Sunday afternoon when their house no longer contained any furniture. We have spent nearly our entire relationship long-distance, which has helped us both realize how much we need to spend the rest of our lives together. After taking a few flights to see each other (I now understand what she sees in Utah), I flew on May 2nd to ask the big question. Amazingly, she said yes. We are impatient to see what our journey together will look like, and all the places and life events we will experience together. Even from the first days of knowing each other, we have had an inexplicable connection that has seen us through the distance. I know that I have found my soulmate, and yet I find new ways to love her each and every day. -Alex