WE ARE SO BLESSED TO CELEBRATE WITH YOU

While Courtney had been attending K2 since February and Austin since April, they didn’t cross paths until months later. Austin met a lot of Courtney’s friends at a K2 young adults progressive dinner and was invited to sit with them at church if he ever wanted. On August 13th, his grandparents, who he normally sat with, didn’t show up for church so he came over to the group, sitting right next to Courtney. They invited Austin to come to dinner with them afterwards. Right before entering, he saw a rainbow in the sky and, when he got inside, saw Courtney standing alone waiting for the others to show up. After dinner, a few of them went to an 80s cover band performance at a local venue where Courtney and Austin talked for 30 minutes straight. It was then he knew he was interested in asking her out. It took a couple more weeks and a couple near misses before he asked her out, but it was well worth the wait.

Austin knew he was going to marry Courtney since early on in their relationship, but needed a good opportunity to propose where she wouldn't figure it out. She had wanted to go to the Tulip Festival for years, so it was the best cover-up. On Monday, April 17th, while Courtney thought he was at work, he took the entire day to prep for the proposal. The plan was to set up letters spelling "Marry Me?" at the bottom of the Italian fountain with a photographer there to capture the experience. However, because of the late winter storms in Utah, almost no tulips had bloomed leaving few flowers to look at. Between that and Courtney being a fast walker, they got to the spot too soon and nothing was set up. Austin convinced her to sit at the top of the fountain for a bit, checking in with the photographer's husband on discord to throw off the scent of what was going on. She picked up Austin's phone to take a picture and saw a message that exposed the plan. Knowing the jig was up, Austin asked her to walk down to the bottom of the fountain, got on one knee, and asked her to marry him. While it did not go according to plan, the proposal was absolutely perfect for the two of them. P.S. True to her theatre-kid roots, Courtney offered to recreate the proposal with the "Marry Me?" sign to honor all the hard work Austin had put into the proposal.