We're getting married!!

Even though our parents knew each other, Ben and I had never really met. We both went to PCC at the same time for about a semester before Ben signed up to join the Army. He finished boot camp, and shortly after got sent overseas to Kuwait. He had followed me on Instagram prior, but while he was overseas, he replied to one of my Instagram stories. We talked back and forth just a few times and that was about it. He messaged me again a month or two later and the same thing happened - talk for a little bit and then it just fizzled out. He messaged me a third time during Christmas of 2021 and we started talking... and that time, it didn't stop. We talked consistently for about a month, and then Ben said he needed to focus on his job while serving overseas. I was heartbroken thinking that was the end of our story, but in June of 2022, we started talking again, and I immediately knew there was something very different and very special about him. We finally met for the first time in September of 2022, when Ben came down to Florida for a whole weekend. I went up to his house at the end of October, and he asked me to be his girlfriend :)

I had been asking Ben to do a photoshoot, and he called me one day and suggested we should do the photoshoot when I came down to visit the next time. I agreed immediately, and started planning. The day of, we went shopping to find a shirt for Ben to wear to the photoshoot. He threw me off so many times that day with little things he'd say to make me think he hadn't even been thinking of engagement. We had to be to the place to take our pictures at 4. When we arrived, the photographer wasn't there yet and Ben said he had only been there a couple times, so he suggested we walk around and look at the park. It was a very pretty running trail that went along a lake and had a more woodsy area to it. The woods were where we were going to take pictures so we walked back there. When we got back to the trees, Ben said his mom wanted a sneak peek of our photoshoot, so we set the phone down and took a video to screenshot a picture from. After we got done posing a little bit, I went to turn the video off, but Ben grabbed my other hand and turned me toward him. He started off by saying how it was crazy that we had been dating for a little over a year. He then said that asking me to be his girlfriend was the second most important question he had ever asked me. He proceeded to get on one knee and say that today, he was going to ask me the first most important question. I was so surprised! I said yes!! The photographer showed up a few minutes after and we took some engagement pictures.