We look forward to you joining us to celebrate our love!

I had not long ago gotten out of a long difficult relationship, and after a bit of time to heal and reflect, I set out into the wild west of dating. It was fall of 2020, though and Covid-19 made meeting people difficult so I turned to the wilder west of dating apps. I had my fair share of pleasant conversations and plenty of weird/awkward ones. Then one day I came across the profile of this guy with a very sweet smile and a cute dog in his pictures. After talking for a bit, he invited me to meet up at the coffee and chocolate shop Chocolaterie Stam. He wanted to be straightforward so he let me know that he planned on taking a tentative job offer he had for after he graduated college, a job that would take him all over the country so any relationship he started would probably be a short term thing. Little did we know that this would be anything but a short time thing. <3

I met Anna on a dating app of all places. I never put too much faith in them, but after walking by an ad for it posted for Bumble every week for a couple years I thought "Why not give it a go?" We had talked for while and ended up having our first date at coffee/chocolate shop I was already fond of. What I'd failed to recall was that I'd never actually gotten a large coffee and I assumed they would be pretty similar to other places. By the end of our date, I don't think I'd every been so caffeinated.

I did a series of drawings of the two of us and assembled them into a photo album like a picture book. I took him out to a lovely spot in the park with a park bench overlooking the Wapsipinicon River and handed him the photo album. The first page said "Our Past" and the next couple pages were scenes from our past including buy a house together and a typical Sunday morning with the two of us drinking coffee on the couch with our cat and dog cozied up next to us. Then it said "Our Future" and the next couple pages had scenes depicting things we had talked about for our future like getting married and having children. Then it said "Our Present." He turned the page and I had written "Will you marry me?"

Anna proposed to me first, and in my defense I already had the ring ordered. If the transit wasn't so long I think I would've beaten her to the punch. I wanted to get a box of chocolates from the place we had our first date, but since it's a little more than suspicious to leave for a 5 hours round trip, I searched for other options. Luckily the place had a couple other locations, one being in Waterloo. So, I wrote some poetry to put in the box, got a bottle of champaign and made BLTs for a picnic. We went to Pleasant Creek park outside of Palo at sunset. After eating I gave her the box of chocolates and got the ring out as she read the poetry.