Thank you all for joining us as Elle and I celebrate our love together on the beach in St. Pete Beach, FL. Apologies in advanced as this love story is going to run a little long! My cousin Christine told me the first year that Elle and I were dating that I had a good one and not to do anything stupid like wait 3 years to get engaged, and that advice I took to heart and waited 5 years to get engaged, so there’s a lot of story to tell. It all started at Sideouts of all places. Sideouts is a place that you’ve all been to in one form or another. Local bar, beach volleyball, live music, mostly townie folks. You know, the type of place where you’re much more likely to hate yourself in the morning than walk out finding your soulmate, but if it were impossible, then Rihanna would have nothing to sing about, and I’m not saying Sideouts is a hopeless place, but it’s pretty close, and we found love anyways. So there I am, sitting with a group of friends before a beach volleyball game. All of a sudden my attention shifts to the other end of the bar where a stunning girl sits down by herself and I’m immediately drawn to her. Beyond her tan skin, big brown eyes, and beautiful smile I could just feel a warmth which made me want to gravitate towards her. Typically this is the part of the story where the liquid courage kicks in and the shy guy with no game faces his fears and walks across the bar to say hi, but I needed a little extra help from the universe, and fate delivered. Turns out, this angel in a black Marines hat that I have never seen before was playing on the same team as the friends who I was there to meet, friends who I had known for years had somehow been keeping her a secret from me. So once everyone gets over to the bar, Elle walks over towards me and I have my moment to introduce myself and make my move, which I did by complimenting her shoes and offering to put a drink on my tab as I ran off because the game was about to start (thanks liquid courage). Luckily for me, those volleyball games happen every week so I did get a mulligan on that one. It was a 94 degree day in June and our now mutual group of friends were meeting to play some outdoor games at a local bar. Within 5 minutes of Elle showing up, everyone in the group decides 94 degrees is too hot and we make our way into the air conditioning. That’s when Elle and I discovered the first thing that we have in common, we both like it hot. I offer to play a game of bags (cornhole for all of the people who are wrong about what the game is called) with her one on one outside, which she gladly accepts because sitting inside and drinking is boring. And just like that, 5 paragraphs in for those who are counting, Elle and I have our first conversation. I think we were both taken aback by just how easy it was to open up and be vulnerable about our past, families, and Elle opened up about her growth in the last year and that the name Elle was one she chose for herself as she was turning the page on her life (she previously went by Danielle or Danni). But the entire time we were having these deep conversations, we were playing big Jenga, bags, and joking and laughing. It was truly a special balance of playful and serious that we keep to this day.

I’ll pick things up since we’re only a week in at this point, but I do work up the courage to pick up the phone and ask her to spend some time one on one, but a little strep throat got in the way. Our first “date” actually came unexpectedly when Elle texted me asking what I was doing on Saturday, June 24, 2017. I told her that I was taking the train to Mount Prospect to meet one of my now best men, Johnny, for his birthday and invited her assuming she would say no, but she didn’t. We met at Duke O’Brian’s right next to the train station and I surprised her by telling her she looked cute. We played some iSpy as we waited for the train and made a plan to stop in a few different towns, grab one drink per bar, and hop back on the train to the next town. At our 2nd stop, in Palatine we were exploring the downtown area when Elle found a brick wall covered in vines and she exclaimed, “OOH I need to touch that! Sorry I like textures,” which I thought was the cutest thing I’d ever heard so when she turned around back towards me after touching the viney wall, I snuck in our first kiss! Elle blushed, smiled, and in the most adorable, soft voice, said, “hi.” And that folks, is how it all started. The rest of the first year, we saw each other at first every weekend, and eventually every day. We spent weekends in Chicago where we first said we loved each other after both laughing at seeing two dogs wearing sunglasses, camping in Wisconsin, and a Brad Paisley concert which ended up being a real snooze fest. Everything was going as good as it possibly could for two young lovers in the honeymoon phase of a new relationship, and after six months it was time to have some real conversations about the direction our relationship was heading. Around the time of our first New Years together, there seemed to be just one lingering problem. I was 28 years old and living in my parents basement like a good millennial. Now everyone’s situation is different and I know that life happens, and sometimes, as we’ll get to in a bit, circumstances dictate that you need to pack up and move in with mom and dad in order to take that next step forward, but at this time in my life that was not the case. I was just a man without a plan, and Elle was the first person to truly call me out on that which made me fall in love her even more because she wasn’t willing to accept a mediocre, just going through the motions relationship. So I made a plan that involved getting a new job, replacing my beat up high school car, and reducing my debt so that we could afford a place of our own, and I think Elle fell in love with me more because I actually stuck to it. So within a few months, we were moving in together in a small one bedroom, handicap accessible (they didn’t tell us that when we signed the lease, apartment. But it was our first home and we made it our own.

So now I’m closing in on two pages here, so I’ll try to go into hyperdrive but with no promises and I hope our wedding website doesn’t have a character limit! That year in our little apartment was one of a lot of milestones. We took our first 2 solo vacations together, the first one not far from where we’ll be getting married, we went full Dave Ramsey on some old credit card debt which led to a career change for me into the financial services field which has truly changed mine and our lives for the better, and we got our first fur baby Mack! But for me the most rewarding thing that happened that year was watching Elle graduate with her Bachelors’ degree in social work. Let me take a sec to brag about my fiance real quick. This girl was doubted her whole life and her educational journey was definitely not smooth sailing. Shortly before we started dating, she was working as a registrar in a local high school and decided she was going to bet on herself and go back to school to be a school social worker. I was in awe watching as she somehow balanced a full-time job, school, and multiple internships, but she was determined to build a career and better life for herself. It cost her a lot of sleep and a lot of tears, but seeing the smile on her face walking up to the podium to get her degree has been one of the proudest moments of my life, and I know it is for her as well. Within a decade, she went from having an advisor tell her homemaker was a possible career path to a strong, independent, beautiful woman with not only Bachelors’ degree, but a MASTERS degree and a 4.0 GPA. I teared up again just typing that and to this day want to kick that advisor in the shins, seriously who says that! That educational journey and my new career did lead us back to my parent’s basement, but this time with a purpose. It was only supposed to be a year, but within the first few months of living there something nobody could’ve predicted happened and the world shut down as a new virus swept through. Businesses were empty, the news was unwatchable grim, but Elle and I made the most of it as our playful nature took over. In that basement we had two person karaoke nights, went to a tiki hut on the beach, ate steak with Bordelaise sauce under the Eifel Tower, and had a casino night in Vegas! And by the summer of 2021 (getting close y’all), Elle got an awesome job as a school social worker and we were off to a much bigger apartment with counter height sinks!

IF YOU’VE GOTTEN BORED AND ARE JUST SKIMMING, THIS IS THE POINT WHERE YOU MIGHT WANT TO STOP AND SLOW DOWN BECAUSE I’M FINALLY GOING TO TELL THE ENGAGEMENT STORY. So now it’s December, 2021 and we’ve just spent the past three weeks watching every romantic Christmas movie that Netflix, Hulu, and Disney Plus have to offer because SOMEONE (me) was recovering from Covid. Somewhere between A Christmas Prince and A Christmas Prince 2: Royal Wedding, the lightbulb went on for me. I’ve known for years at this point that Elle was the one, not one doubt in my mind, but I had always just kept waiting for that next puzzle piece to fall into place before asking her to marry me, plus she made it very clear that she didn’t want to get engaged in my parent’s basement (respect). Now I’m the type of person that once I get an idea, I can put together a plan pretty quickly but if I don’t act on it right away it’s just not going to happen (Elle can attest to this). We already had made reservations at a nice restaurant, Cooper's Hawk, for Christmas Eve,so on December 23 I went out “Christmas shopping”, bought a ring, found a romantic location in a courtyard right outside the restaurant that had a giant Christmas tree and a bunch of string lights overhead, let the hostess know that I’ll be proposing that night before our dinner, and most importantly FaceTimed with her father who lives in Florida to get his blessing to marry his daughter. So now the day is here! It’s Christmas Eve and the first order of business is going to my parent’s house for our Christmas celebration. Dinner is great, we open gifts, and on the way out I whisper in my mom’s ear that I’m proposing tonight and sneak out the door without giving her a chance to react. On the drive home, A Christmas Prince 1, 2, and 3 (yes there’s really three) must have gotten to Elle’s head too because she was absolutely grilling me about when we’re getting engaged, and I am dying inside as I jokingly give her a different answer every time she asks. I narrowly managed to make it to the restaurant while keeping the surprise in tact. The wintery wonderland of a proposal location turned out to be rainy and kind of muddy, but I convinced Elle to take a quick walk under the lights anyways. We walk in front of the tree and I hold both of her hands, and I was so worried about what I wanted to say that I pulled the ring out of my pocket well before I finally remembered to go down on my knee. After five of the best years of my life, I finally get to ask the woman I love to marry me…and she said NO! And then she said no a couple more times before she cried and said YES!!! Dinner was a blur as we FaceTimed with our parents and texted Steve the Caddy Man who likes weddings and open bars and predicted our eventual marriage in a bar within the first months of us dating because we had a glow about us. I know not the most well planned and drawn out engagement, but it was ours and it was about damn time! I’d like to thank you all for reading and we are thrilled to share our love story with our friends and family in St. Pete! Please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions as the big day gets closer!