Philip and I met on December 22, 2017. I was living in Georgia at the time but I was visiting family in Ocala for the holidays and I wanted to check out the downtown area. Philip was downtown with a group of his friends and they were celebrating the holidays as well. We were at a restaurant/bar called 'Pi' when he approached me regarding a 'bet' his brother and friends had come up with as the icebreaker. We ended up exchanging numbers at the end of our conversation. Since I was only in town for a few days we met up for our first date at Harry's on Christmas Eve. The date went well enough that Philip wanted to get together again on Christmas Day after our families were done celebrating. Since it was Christmas there were only a handful of restaurants that were open so after meeting downtown we drove together to Hooters. On the drive there he asked me what my favorite food was and I laughed because my answer was so silly. I finally told him it was pizza. Anyone who knows Philip knows that Pizza is his ABSOLUTE favorite! He laughed and said we were going to get along just fine! I was going home to Atlanta the next day so we said our goodbyes but promised we would see each other again. Our next time getting together happened sooner than we both expected. Philip and a few of his friends came up to Atlanta and we celebrated New Years Eve together. I ended up moving to Ocala in March and the rest is history!

We had planned a trip to Ireland at the beginning of September, but ended up having to cancel the trip last minute. I was positive that Philip was going to propose on that trip!* However, a few weeks went by and Philip texted me one afternoon saying he wanted to go to Harry's for a date night. I didn't think anything of it because Harry's is one of our favorite restaurants. While we were at dinner he kept texting on his phone, which I thought was strange since he usually does not do that during dinner. When we were walking out of the restaurant he calls out "what are you two doing here?" It turns out his sisters were walking by! I knew then that something was up but was not registering what was going on. His sisters then ask if we wanted them to take a picture of us and when we were posing Philip got down on one knee and asked if I would marry him! Of course I said yes! *Philip later told me that he had been planning on proposing in Ireland. I had booked reservations to stay at the Trump Hotel in Doonberg as Philip is an avid Trump fan! He was going to propose while we were staying there.