We’re getting married!

Jacob and I met on the first day of a condensed summer statistics class. Three hours a day, multiple days a week in the thick of what should have been our summer vacation - no one in their right mind should have been sitting in that class. And had any number of things in our academic careers happened differently, we would not have been either. God truly is the author of our stories. I have an affinity for beverages. Wherever I go, you can bet ill have at least one, but generally the average runs closer to three. On this particular day, I rushed into class with a coffee and a very large, metal water bottle. Upon slinging my backpack into my seat, my water bottle LEAPT from the side pocket where (I thought) it had been secured up until that point and crashed to the floor with an immensely impressive chorus of bangs, clangs and clashes. Horrified, I wildly looked around the room for something with which to clean the contents of the cup that had begun to swiftly spill out onto the floor. Jacob, being the gentlman that he is, was out of his chair immediately and, having produced paper towels seemingly out of thin air, began cleaning up my mess without a second thought. Two and a half years later, there are times I still feel like that same flustered girl speechlessly watching that beautiful man clean up my messes. Over the course of the next few weeks, I admired how readily he answered questions in class or helped a fellow student comprehend a difficult concept. I noticed how he took the time to arrive early to class and befriended our elderly, eccentric Statistics teacher. So, during the last week of class, when he asked me if id like to get coffee with him, I knew that he was the type of man I would never regret saying yes to. And it has been one of the great honors of my life to continue saying yes to him.

Christines Story: Under the pretense of a day spent taking family pictures in an apple orchard, Jacob proposed on the most spectacular, quintessential autumn day in the orchard where I first told him I loved him.

Jacobs Story: Early on in our relationship, Christine and I went to Marker-Miller orchard with her mom Jane and her sister Lauren to pick apples. While I was playfully feeding her apple cider donut holes from the farmer’s market, Christine told me she loved me for the first time. Several months before the actual proposal I started planting the seeds of my plan. One evening on our way to a dinner date, I mentioned how nice it would be to get some fall pictures taken. Not bringing up my plan every chance I could was difficult because she’s the first person I want to share the things I’m excited about with. Somehow, I managed to keep it to myself until it was time to start putting the rest of the pieces of my plan together. This is when Jane and I started working on the finer details of the day of the proposal. My birthday was a few weeks before I planned to propose so I suggested to Jane that we could get Christine’s direct input on a photographer by making it sound like a surprise for my birthday. To further help avoid suspicions, we invited Christine’s brother Bryan, Sister in-law Emily, and their son Elias to participate in the afternoon of pictures. This worked out wonderfully since they wound up carrying the ring in their diaper bag. It turns out those ring boxes look comically obvious in the pocket of a pair of pants. The day of the proposal could not have been better. The weather was clear and the scenery was breathtaking. Since we were getting pictures taken, Christine was getting her hair done, had her nails done, and was dressed to the nines. To say she looked ravishing would be an understatement. We started taking pictures and I was as careful as I could be to hide how hard my heart was pounding. After torturing everyone there with suspense for as long as I could, I went for it. On Friday the 11th of October, in the same orchard she first told me she loved me, I asked Christine to be my wife.