I always said I didn't want to meet my significant other in a bar. Well, on Memorial Day I decided to drive to Marquette for something to do after the parade in Iron River. Steve and I had been messaging for a few weeks after meeting on an online dating platform, and I figured I would see if he was around after I did all the things I wanted to do in Marquette. I messaged him and he was in Houghton! He had taken his bike up to ride the trials in the Copper Country. He asked me if I was going to be in Marquette for a while, and I really wanted to finally meet him in person, so I said yes and went back to TJ Maxx to waste time. We ended up meeting for a beer at Blackrocks Brewery (so much for not meeting at a bar!), and then he took me to see the actual Blackrocks as I had never been. When we got back to my car, he asked me what I was doing the following weekend. We agreed that I would come back up to Marquette and we would go to the Spring Awakening Beerfest together. I remember after meeting Steve at Blackrocks, I messaged my cousin Cassidy and had already decided I was going to marry him. For me it was somewhat love at first sight. I appreciated his calmness and how well we got along, a fact Steve reiterated the weekend following the Spring Beerfest when we went to Milwaukee together for a Kenny Chesney concert and he said, "We get along pretty well, we should date."

Three years and many adventures later, Steve asked me to marry him. I had been asking Steve for MONTHS when we were going to get engaged. I knew he had bought the setting for my ring, and just needed the center stone and I was impatient. It was the Wednesday before our trip out to Northern California, where we would visit San Francisco, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, and Napa, when Steve asked me if my ring size had changed from the previous September. I told him I didn't know, and he told me I had to go get it resized on my way to work the next day. Well I forgot, so Steve texted me and told me I had to stop in the store ASAP. We got that all sorted out, and left for our trip. On the third day of our trip we went to Yosemite. It was GORGEOUS, tons of waterfalls and it was early Spring so they were raging. Now I suspected (knew) that Steve had brought the ring on our trip with us. It was just a question of when it would happen. Visiting waterfalls has been the core of a lot of our adventures and they are one of my favorite things. Our plan in Yosemite was to do a hike that would bring us to two waterfalls then see the others that were slightly off the main road. The hike was not easy, and we ended up cutting out the second falls. The whole hike I was commenting that I was sweaty, would look terrible in photos, and my fingers were swollen from being hot (I thought the proposal was coming). Well he didn't ask me at that waterfall, or the next one. Or the following two. Finally, driving out of the park after a full day Steve pulled off at a lookout, saying he wanted to take a picture. I was tired and hot and said "pass". Then a tour bus arrived and tons of people got out, so Steve got back in the car to drive to another overlook. He stopped just up the road and got out asking me to come take a photo with him. I thought, well, this must be it because Steve is not a "let's take a photo" guy. It was there, overlooking Yosemite Valley, that Steve asked me to marry him!

We are so excited to celebrate this next chapter in our lives with you. We hope you can make it up to Marquette to see the beautiful town we both now call home during one of the most magnificent times of year. Hopefully the leaves will cooperate and be at or near peak color when we tie the knot and start our lives as Mr. and Mrs. Moore. Our ceremony will be at the beautiful St. Peter Cathedral in downtown Marquette, with reception to follow at Red Barn Weddings in Skandia.