If we want to be technical we met in preschool, but we actually became friends sophomore year of high school when I sat next to him (and cheated off him) in Algebra 2...Thank you Mr. Ramsell. We both went to The University of Toledo for college and stayed friends for freshman year, until Brendan confessed his undying love for me (kidding), but he did like me. I, on the other hand was like heck no. Fast forward to February 2020 when I sat in my room at the Chi O house begging my friends to come with me to the PIKE party so I could see Brendan. We started talking through the beginning of COVID and officially started dating over face-time when he introduced me to his MeMe and she asked if I was his girlfriend. Brendan just laughed and I asked if we should finally make this facebook official.

The only request I had for the proposal was wanting it to be genuine surprise. We were getting ready to leave to go to DC for a long weekend, a few days prior I was at my parent's house and my mom asked me if I was going to paint my nails a different color before we left (they were green at the time), this was seemingly innocent but if you know me, you know I was thinking about the hidden message behind that question. The night before were leaving, Brendan urgently needed to go home to "get his car tags", which I found suspicious because we were driving my car. When I got home from my internship that day I checked his location and it was turned off, but I just thought it was my phone being slow because I had horrible service at our old apartment. Next, I called my mom, who did not answer the phone, which I also found suspicious. My mom called me back about an hour later and said "she was taking nap". Now, I've known my mom for my whole life, and I have never once heard her say she was going to take a nap...lol. Anyway, I definitely had my suspicions as to what he was actually doing, but wasn't trying to get my hopes up. (He was asking my dad for permission to propose <3) When we arrived in DC, we found out it was during the Cherry Blossom festival. We thought they would be in the National Mall, so when we did not see any, Brendan was so upset. We went back to our hotel and Brendan was so set on finding out what was going on with the Cherry Blossoms. Turns out, we were looking in the wrong spot. We were walking in National Mall when we decided to go look for the Cherry Blossom Trees. It was a Sunday and there were crowds of people everywhere, I started to get annoyed and wanted to back to explore the museums. Brendan was insisting on going to this one spot, he dragged me through the crowds until we reached the spot. I was so oblivious as to why we needed to go to this one specific spot he saw. I truly did not think he was going to propose right then because it is so unlike him to do it in public, let alone when there are crowds of people around. He asked a stranger to take our picture using my phone and I quickly took it back after the picture. Brendan handed the stranger his phone and asked for one on his and thats when it clicked I literally said "oh we're doing this now?!?!"