We’re tying the knot!

August 2019 We first met when John came in for an interview for a tow truck driver position with the tow company I was working for. Pretty much immediately after he started working there, we became really good friends! January 2020 We had started talking on the phone with each other for hours at a time every day and we saw each other almost every day, even if for only a few minutes. During this time, we learned a lot about each other and helped each other through some difficult situations. February 2020 It wasn't until around Valentines Day that we finally realized and then both admitted that we had feelings for each other. March 2020 We finally made things official when he asked me to be his girlfriend!

February 13, 2021 John and I had just signed the lease paperwork for the shop after weeks of looking at different places and reaching out to different people! We were inside doing *another* walkthrough to look things over and decide what we needed and wanted to do with the building. I was in the shop looking at a piece of glass with wood around it and was trying to tell John, who was in the office, that we should clean it up and put vinyl stickers on it with the business name to hang up as a sign. John wasn't replying and I honestly thought that he just wasn't listening to me so I started to walk into the office and as I came around the corner of the doorway I saw John kneeling down on one knee and pulling the ring box out of his jacket pocket. We were both shaking and tearing up. John said "are you sure you want this forever?" to which I replied "yes".

John and I have been discussing a date since the day he proposed. We both agreed that we wanted a date that wasn't too close to either of our birthday's or any holiday's because we wanted to be sure that no matter what, our anniversary would be a special date that couldn't get lumped in with anything else. Nothing felt right though. I knew I wanted something in the fall and I thought that doing it the day of Bill's birthday would be special but I also wanted to plan the date to where I had graduated from JSU and had a year to plan which eventually led us to 9/3/23. We started talking about eloping not long after we decided that date though because it felt silly to wait for us to actually be married for that long all because of trying to plan some big event. While I was sitting at the shop one day looking into how marriages work in Alabama it finally occurred to me... August 30th! My mother and step-father got married on August 30, 2003. That day was a huge day in my life and I felt like it would be really nice to bring new life to the date since we lost Bill in January of 2019. I immediately told John my thought and he loved it! That same night I came home and asked my mother if that would be something she was ok with or not and she started crying as she said she would love that very much! Originally, the plan was to just exchange vows with my mother present and then let her notarize the paperwork and go pay the fee at the courthouse and then doing our 'real' wedding on 9/3/23. But, as we started planning things, everything kept growing. Now we are planning to have a 'micro-wedding' with our closest family and friends to celebrate with us!