July 9, 2021: We matched on Bumble. I was lucky and only on the app for about a week before we matched. Dominic almost didn't swipe right because he thought my account was fake. I asked what the best State Park in Tennessee was and the conversation flowed from there. July 30, 2021: We went on our first date, ice cream at Bruster's and just drove and talked for hours. August 10, 2021: Dominic officially asked me to be his girlfriend. Coincidentally, it was the same day my niece, Lily, was born (so of course she is our flower girl).

Erika: He totally surprised me! It was a Tuesday and we planned to go to Rock Island State Park after I got off work. We were going to hike and Dominic "wanted to talk to the manager about an open position". I remember while getting ready to leave he questioned my shirt choice. He asked if I really wanted to meet his possible new boss in a tie-dye red white and blue tank top (I should have caught on then because he had never asked me to change clothes before). When we got to the park he was adamant about taking his brand new, very large, backpack with us on our less than a mile hike (another thing I should have caught, but wrote it off because I knew how excited he was about his new backpack). When we got down to the rocks at the base of the waterfall we propped up our phones and started taking some pictures. He told me to turn around and I figured he was messing with me but did so anyway. I had glanced back because he was taking a while and saw him fumbling with the backpack so I kept my back turned until he told me to turn around and when I did he was down on one knee. I immediately burst into tears and of course I said yes. He knew I'd say yes but was so relieved he didn't have to hide anything from me anymore. He showed me the backpack that was full of snacks and several outfit changes in case I wanted to take pictures. I asked if we still had to go talk to the park manager and we were never going to, that was just to throw me off. He knew I wanted to be surprised and that's exactly what he did, it was exactly how I dreamed of being proposed to. Dominic: This was probably one of the most stressful things I had ever planned. I had originally thought about proposing in the fall in East Tennessee with fall colors but after talking to some of her family on our trip to San Diego in the spring, I thought why wait. I worked out some of the details with her sister, Rachel, while Erika played in the water. I found out that a park that I used to work at, Rock Island, was going to have an opening and thought that it would be a great place to propose, since it was the first place that I told her that I loved her. After that, I tried to get everything together for the day. I told her that we’d be going for me to talk to the manager and see about possibly transferring there, and I already had the engagement ring and just needed help getting outfits together in case she wanted to do pictures again (shout out Rachel again for helping me pick out clothes for Erika). I packed them all into a backpack that I had bought and loaded it all up into the car with snacks. I was incredibly anxious as Erika can typically tell when I’m planning something but she never let on she knew. Once she was off work, she changed and then we headed off. Once we got to Rock Island, we parked near Twin Falls and hiked down in front of it. We took some selfies, then I suggested we do photos with our phones propped up. While the phones were up, I grabbed the ring from the backpack and started to rock hop over to her. Erika briefly turned around but I’m pretty sure I shot her a look that said to turn back around. I got over to her, got on a knee, tried to take a photo from my watch before I told her she could turn around. Even though I knew she’d probably say yes, I was still very nervous. I was beyond thankful when she nodded yes and felt a massive stress leave me.