Billy and I met in high school in the most random circumstances. Every summer my cousins would come from Minnesota to visit Boston for a week or two. Typically this entailed staying up in my grandparents' Milton house for a few days and then heading down to their Cape house for the remainder of the trip. In the summer of 2009, my cousins and I were between the ages of 17 and 19 and wanted to find something fun to do. Since we didn't really know anyone at the time, one of my cousins volunteered to go talk to the boy who was hired to mow the lawn and see if he knew of anything to do around town. He was our age and agreed to pick us up that night to hang out with his friends. Now - our grandparents and parents were never going to let us hang out with this random boy so we decided we were going to sneak out and have him come get us at 10pm. For the next few days (until we got very busted for sneaking out), this boy picked us up and introduced us to a new group of kids each night. One of the nights, we were introduced to Billy. I started talking to him and it turned out we had a lot of random connections - his sister went to my high school, he lived only 15min from me in Milton, and we were currently going to school in the same town. After that week down the Cape, Billy and I began texting/chatting everyday and very soon started dating. This coming July will be our 12 year anniversary - and to think it's all because my cousin talked to the lawn boy!

He took me out to one of our usual Saturday lunches and I was so nervous because I had a feeling he was going to do it that day. Background - Billy is horrible at keeping secrets so he let it slip in early January that he was planning on proposing soon. At lunch, I could barely eat because I was so nervous. I just kept looking around expecting something to happen and couldn't maintain my cool - FYI public proposals are my living breathing nightmare. After lunch wrapped up, he suggested we go home because he was tired and wanted to take a nap. This then made me think that I was totally wrong and that he wasn't doing it that day. However, when we walked into our apartment it was fully decorated with tealight candles, petals & champagne. One of my best friends had apparently come over while we were out to lunch and totally decked it out. Once we walked in he got down on one knee and proposed! Then we immediately got in an Uber to a local restaurant where all our family & friends were waiting to celebrate. It was the best day ever :)