“Hey where in the Midwest are you from?” I had just moved back to my hometown of San Diego after spending 8 years in the Midwest, and matched with a cute guy on the dating app, Bumble, whose dating profile said he was “Midwest born and raised." Between my 8 years living in Minnesota and Chicago, I felt confident I could cover my bases with any strong sports references to win this guy over. “I’m from the great state of Minnesota! Have you ever been?” “Welllll David- you’re talking to a UST Tommie 😊” “Well Meg- you’re talking to a UW-River Falls Falcon 😉 We were kinda rivals in basketball. Wow, that’s super cool though! I grew up near the Twin Cities. How did you like UST?” “Yeah! Love meeting other Minnesotans! Where exactly did you grow up? And I loved St Thomas! My mom grew up in Bloomington and we have a family cabin up north near Brainerd, so real familiar with the 10,000 lake state” Dave and I ended up planning our first date for the following night at a speakeasy tiki bar. We spent hours that night laughing and getting to know each other, and couldn’t believe how natural conversation flowed between us. We had such a great first date that we planned our second date for the very next night just to make sure it wasn’t too good to be true. Not only did we both have strong ties towards Minnesota, but what really sealed the deal was when we started talking about our jobs. I told Dave I worked at Pepsi, and ironically, he told me that he spent a few summers working for Pepsi as a merchandiser in college out of the Burnsville, Minnesota office. What was crazy was that I had also started my career as a Sales Rep out of the Burnsville, MN office in 2014. After talking through when we both worked there, it turned out we overlapped working for Pepsi out of the same location during the same summer. Now if you talk to Dave, he’ll say that he swears he saw me one overnight shift while he was clocking in. And if you ask me, there’s no way I could miss a 6’8 guy – but I do still feel bad that he was the one merchandising all the Pepsi products that I notoriously would over-order at each grocery store 😊 It felt as though fate brought us together 5 years later in San Diego. Not wanting to miss our chance with each other again, Dave officially asked me to be his girlfriend only a few weeks after our first date.

Meg and I flew into Minneapolis on December 23rd, and we stayed at my parent's house in Lakeville. I planned to propose to Meg on the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis in the afternoon on Christmas Eve. I hired a photographer to secretly take photos, and only a few select people knew it was happening that day. I wanted it to be a perfect surprise. Only one small problem; I didn’t have the ring. Yep, I flew to Minnesota with my future fiancée without a ring. That particular symbol of love was somewhere on a FedEx airplane; not even the jeweler knew where it was. I was supposed to pick up the ring from the jeweler in San Diego a week before my flight. However, due to a combination of shipping delays and the package being lost by FedEx for a short while, the jeweler didn't have it in his possession either. Fortunately, the ring was delivered to the jeweler's store on December 23rd, but I had already flown to Minnesota. Luckily, Megan's sister, Kelly, was flying to Minnesota that afternoon and was able to pick up the ring. It was the morning of Christmas Eve-- Kelly successfully picked up the ring from the jeweler and brought it with her to Minnesota. Kelly was staying in Bloomington at her cousin's, and I was staying in Lakeville, about 15 minutes drive from each other. Meg likes to sleep in, and I like to get up early, so I told her I was “going to Caribou for coffee.” I took off for Bloomington to pick up the ring from Kelly. In the afternoon, Meg and I grabbed lunch in the warehouse district at Smack Shack, but we mostly had some cocktails to calm our nerves. We went to St. Anthony and started walking towards the Stone Arch Bridge. Not many words were said by either of us, I was very nervous, and I think Meg knew I was going to pop the big question on the bridge. It was all a blur at this point. We walked near the center of the bridge, and as Meg was facing the skyline, I dropped to one knee. Hearing her say yes was one of the best feelings of my life. We were both elated. The photographer I hired to capture the moment was snapping photos. However, there happen to be two other professional photographers hanging out on the Stone Arch Bridge that also captured the proposal. It was all so perfect.