We are getting married!

We met in a communications class at Graceland in the Fall of 2014 and were assigned as group mates in a semester-long project. This, however, is hardly the beginning of our love story. When we began crossing paths more frequently in early 2015, we started making excuses to see each other. Ryan would leave lunch at a carefully planned time to, hopefully, run into Brooke in the student center if her class released at its scheduled time. Brooke, would occasionally accompany a freshman from her hall who was dating Ryan’s roommate, for the chance to stop by. Soon, we had exchanged numbers and started seeing each other, not just by “coincidence”. We made time for each other nearly every day, fell in love very fast, and with an intensity that made our commitment to try dating long-distance an easy choice. Not even four months into our relationship, Brooke was graduated, with plans to attend CSU in pursuit of a Master’s. Ryan had two more years at Graceland. The better part of the next two years can be described as a series of too-short weekends shared in farm-town motels halfway between Iowa and Colorado, and the weeks that would populate the space between those occasional weekends together. We both developed as individuals in ways we might not have if we’d spent those two years together: Brooke produced work that was awarded honors at conferences and was one of two students to finish her degree on time. Ryan received honors as an Academic All-American in soccer, graduated summa cum laude, and was admitted to the graduate school of his choice. Despite the distance that separated us, we thrived together and individually. But we do not romanticize the time we spent dating long-distance. We missed each other constantly and made the time apart bearable by fantasizing about the life we knew we’d soon share. We graduated within 2 weeks of each other in May of 2017, and have been living happily together ever since. We got engaged in Atlanta in September of 2017.