It all began squished in the backseat of a car. We were 5 friends road tripping to Georgia. Alexis had just graduated and Matthew was headed into Winter Break. Slipping down mountains in Tennessee and counting cows out the window of our car, we had no idea that when the week ended, our journey had only just begun. Maybe it was the long conversations we had hiking through the woods or grooving to Taylor Swift on the way, but whatever it was, it's lead us to where we are.

It was one of our weekly picnic date nights. The sun was starting to set at Ridley Creek State Park, so we made our way to a new favorite spot of ours: the line of trees protecting a small green expanse before the mansion's garden grounds. As we strung up our hammock, Matt decided he needed to go to the car for water. Alexis hung back in the trees. When he returned, he had a handmade wooden chest. "This is our memory box," he said getting into the hammock. Inside were movie tickets, dated straw wrappers and rocks, play programs, and various things from places we'd been together. Underneath the memories was a small white box. Matthew picked it up, got out of the hammock down onto one knee. "This isn't a memory," he said. "This is for us to make a lifetime of memories together." He opened the box to the beautiful diamond. "Will you marry me?" Her answer, of course, was yes.