Brittany was out for a girl's night with Mistyana when they wound up at the local dive bar for Karaoke. What they didn't know was that a simple GNO would lead to Brittany meeting the bar's most infamous karaoke connoisseur. The master of vocal mimicry, the Weird Al impersonator himself, none other than Jared, the karaoke bar's favorite regular. Jared says he remembers everything about that night. Brittany only remembers because of how frequently Jared's told her. Otherwise, it's a black spot for her. What's NOT a black spot on her memory though is the next day when Brittany was online looking at those apps everyone seems to be on, when a certain redheaded face popped up looking very familiar. A confirmation message sent, a date requested for that weekend, and so it began!

After a few weeks of basically seeing each other every free moment, we planned our first day trip together. We wound up in Monterey, after a long car ride that included introducing Jared to the greatest musical soundtrack of all time: Hamilton! (You're welcome honey :P) We went to the aquarium and saw the jellies, went to Pepper Palace and Jared conquered the challenge, and we ended up at Point Lobos State Park, strolling through the coastal cliff trails. It was absolutely stunning. Brittany had a brief thought that this might be a great place to get engaged one day. It was beautiful and romantic and perfect... Until Jared started projectile vomiting. You see, while we had been exploring the cliffs and climbing on the shore rocks, Jared had found a salt deposit left behind from where a small puddle of seawater had evaporated off of the rock. So what does he do except decide to place this unsanitary salt source in his mouth, only for it to make a reappearance about thirty minutes later at a beach up the road! After a while of Brittany standing outside the beach bathroom listening to the fireworks, Jared finally came out again, looking about as pale as a sheet of printer paper. Brittany shoved him in the front seat of the car, gave him the stuffed animals they had bought at the aquarium to hug, covered him up with the brand new blanket they'd just bought two hours before, and drove him home.

Jared will say he knew right away that Brittany was the one for him. Brittany will admit she was a bit more cautious. After a couple of bumps in the road, Brittany figured some stuff out and realized that she had the greatest person in the world right there, so what was she waiting for? Since 2018, we've been on countless roadtrips, sang too many karaoke songs to name, moved in together, Jared has adopted Brittany's furry son from a former life arrangement, they've adopted a puppy together, and basically decided that this is the kind of thing they could get used to for say, the next sixty or seventy years. Until one of them (okay, probably Brittany) forgets who the other is. Then Jared will go all Notebook on her and tell her their story every day until she remembers! Or something like that!

As previously stated, Jared had known for QUITE a while that Brittany was the one. So much so that he'd bought a ring almost a year earlier to the day from when he actually proposed! (He held off though, because he didn't want to spook Brittany. She's kind of like a horse that way, you've got to approach very slowly!) So finally the time came for Brittany and Jared to go back to Point Lobos. Brittany had thought this would be it, but she wasn't holding her breath because the last year for Christmas, Jared had completely psyched her out for her present, so secret keeping and doubling back to trip her up was in his wheelhouse. Brittany thought this might be the time but she wasn't sure. It wasn't until they were walking along the same path they had taken together on that first trip, underneath the coastal trees and steps away from the cliff when Jared knelt down on his knee and pulled out the ring did she know. He asked, she said yes, and wedding planning got to wait a few days while they enjoyed their newly engaged bliss at the coast for a few days!

Since the proposal, the wedding planning has gone through many phases of starting and stopping. We found a venue right off the bat that seemed almost too good to be true, it was going to allow us to have a stress free event with as many people as we wanted. Then a global pandemic hit. The world stopped, and so did our planning! But it was fine, because no matter what the world looked like by the time April 2021 came around, we still had a beautiful outdoor venue that would hold 10 people or 100 people! When we finally felt comfortable to start actively wedding planning again, we found our vendors and locked them down for our date, because postponing just didn't feel right, even with the world falling down around us. Then the world kept falling, because our perfect, pandemic-proof venue cancelled on us just four months away from our date. We'd already confirmed our other vendors, and with everyone from 2020 competing with everyone from 2021 for professional venues, we knew there was nothing we could find that would allow us to keep our wedding day without sacrificing our unborn children for the financial capital. So, we decided to take our refunded venue costs (did we mention it was already completely paid for? RIP stress free wedding!) and we spent the next three months building a venue from nothing in Jared's MeeMaw's backyard! It's been a labor of love, and A LOT of stress, but now that the manual labor is finished, we can't wait to enjoy our beautiful day out there! The best part of it now is that we have a beautiful area for family gatherings for years to come! Jared's family has been absolutely amazing, there's no way this wedding would be taking place if his parents and Uncle David hadn't been able to just stop everything and focus on making our dream a reality, we are so grateful to them!