(There are SO many details to this story so I'm giving the 30,000 foot version here) Justin & I met in 2011 during our freshman year of college at a small Bible school in upstate NY. We were in choir together and had mutual friends, so we would hang out in groups a lot. At the very beginning of our sophomore year, Justin told me that he liked me & I told him I wasn't interested. But over the next few months, as we spent time together, my feelings for him slowly grew. We began dating and about a month later, I broke it off.

Fast forward about 5 years to 2018 and we hadn't really spoken at all during that time. A few days after Valentines Day 2018, I come downstairs to a flower and note from Justin. I was completely surprised, since we hadn't been in contact at all. [Context...this is Justin now. Jeanine Melville stopped me after church one day and said "if you ever want things to happen between you and Alicia again you need to reach out." Me being me, I overthought that statement because doing something was one of the furthest things from my mind. So I sent her a yellow rose and hoped that I would even hear back from her. Now back to Alicia...] Over the next few months, we would text here and there, but I was only interested in being friends. In August 2018, I moved back up to New York [Justin here...this was one of the happiest days of my life], where Justin had been living since we went to college. Over those next months, he was very intentional in seeking to spend time with me while also being patient in giving me space [Key phrase during this time "Patiently Pursue"]. The beginning of May, he told me where he was at and what his intentions were [shocking, I know], and I told him I needed time to think about it all. It didn't take too long, as we began dating in June of 2019 again. We both knew that we wouldn't need much time before moving forward to marriage.

December 2019: We had gone to Philadelphia just after Christmas for my sister's wedding and then out to Indiana to spend time with his family over New Years. Justin LOVES basketball [understatement of the decade], and he discovered that my Philadelphia 76ers were playing his Indiana Pacers in Indianapolis on New Year's Eve. So we made an afternoon/evening out of traveling to the city to go to the game and dinner after. At this point, I knew that we would be getting engaged sometime in the next few months, but had no clue when. Since Indiana was clearly winning against Philadelphia [It wasn't even close], we decided to leave the game early and walk around downtown a little before dinner. We came to the circle in the center of the city, where they have a monument that is decorated like a Christmas tree around the holidays. We walked up to the monument, enjoying the view, and the next thing I knew, Justin had pulled the ring out of his pocket and was down on one knee asking me to marry him. I was pretty surprised, since he had played it pretty cool all day [What can I say, I was pretty confident], giving no indication that this was going to be happening. But I very quickly said yes! [In summation, I won!]