We met in a completely unexpected way. We both were not planning on having a night out in Tampa but our friends convinced us nonetheless. We met at MacDinton’s and ventured over to Dubliner’s where we ended the night dancing to Van Morrisons’ Brown Eyed Girl with a kiss. It felt like magnets or some gravitational pull leading me over Dave’s group, and I knew I couldn’t leave without meeting. A first date was set after telling me “I’m going to take you on a date.” Years later, I finally heard the full story. Dave went back to his group and told them “I’m gonna date her.” Little did I know where we would end up! We were inseparable after that and continued our adventures around Tampa.

There’s a trail outside of Philadelphia that Emily and I hike often that leads to a covered bridge (the trail is called Wissahickon Valley Park/Forbidden Drive Trail - see our ‘Things to do’ section for if you’re here for an extra day or two and want to go for a hike). The trail and covered bridge was the scene of the proposal, where things ended well, of course, but didn’t go quite as planned.. The original plan was to hike with Emily, and along the trail we were going to ‘run into’ friends of ours at different points on the trail who ‘just happened to be there’. It’d make sense for the first friend to be on that trail, and it wouldn’t be crazy to run into the second one, but as we came across the third and fourth and fifth friend Emily would start to put two-and-two together that something special was happening (no, not a Flash mob dance routine!). At that point I’d get on one knee when a distracted-by-the-wonder-of-it-all Emily turns around. Yea, that was the plan.. I was set to meet with my friends the morning before the hike, so that I could explain the plan to them and tell them where to be on the trail. However, an hour before we were all going to meet up, an errand popped up that I had to complete that day. The pre-proposal meeting was scrapped, and so I drew a map of the trail to mark where each person should be. I handed the drawing to my brother Josh so that he could position the others, but let’s just say that the map made more sense to one (me) than to others. As we hiked, our friends were not where I was expecting them to be on the trail (at no fault of their own), and I had to change my ‘script’. I managed to get to the bridge on time while Emily talked to our friends, and as our song started playing over a Boombox speaker, Emily turned around and saw me standing at the far end of the bridge. She finally caught on to what was happening, and as she walked the 200 ft towards me we both spent the next 2 minutes just taking in the moment. Thankfully, the ‘script’ that I had planned for this moment was still in place - “Em, when we first met I told you ‘I’m going to date you’, and now five years later I’m asking you ‘Will you marry me?’