As many of you know Nelson and I met online. What many of you may not know is that a second date almost never happened. Nelson and I went on a lunch date. Who does that?! To make it worse, we went to a Mexican restaurant and didn't order margaritas! Talk about stunted conversation and awkward silences. When we left both of us felt we could take or leave a second date. Luckily, Nelson thought I was beautiful enough to warrant a second date. Our second date started out with beers at a soccer bar and it made up for all the awkwardness of the first date! After the date my checks were sore from smiling and laughing!

Caitlin and I are a big lovers of the mountains, and try to get out to them as often as possible. She also really loves her family, so I knew that I wanted to incorporate both of those into my proposal. After getting her parents blessing, I got her sister Laura's blessing. With Laura's help, I was able to find an amazing hike and plan the proposal. We went to Upper Piney River Trail in Vail. It was a beautiful hike all the way through. There was a wonderful mountain backdrop that led into an aspen grove. Laura was hiking with us and we had a secret code for when I was planning to propose. It was "This is a great place to take a picture." I thought that I had everything planned out, but as it turns out not everything goes according to plan! I had a speech fully written out that I had been listening to at work so I could memorize it. Unfortunately, it turns out that facing each other and holding hands to take a picture is not the most natural way to take a photo! That, and my shaking hands helped Caitlin immediately figure out what was happening. As Caitlin figured it out, I completely forgot everything that I was going to say. That was for the best, because everything I said ended up being exactly what I was feeling in the moment. We celebrated with lots of photos, champagne and cheesecake. Since we were hiking we didn't have any service so we got to live in the moment together. It was a truly wonderful day, one that we will remember forever.