We met at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ while working for Peer Jacks Mentoring. We initially bonded on a work trip down in Tucson, but remained close through the year. That summer, Bianca broke her foot hiking and Erika eagerly took on the role as caregiver (despite Bianca's assurances that she did not need any help). After a few months of growing closer, including hours long conversations in empty parking garages and spontaneous trips to Disneyland, it became clear there was more to our friendship. Bianca asked Erika to be her girlfriend on New Years Day in 2017.

We had talked in depth about wedding traditions and what was most important to us as our lives became more and more entwined. Although we had discussed both proposing to each other in the past, the closer we got to being engaged the less and less we cared about the traditional, down on one knee and pop out a ring, surprise. We had decided to work with a jeweler to design our rings so they coordinated with each other, so the surprise was already out the window. After Erika jokingly suggested they go to Ireland to see Ed Sheeran perform live, Bianca ran with it to start planning an engagement trip. The first full day in Ireland, while in our gorgeous Airbnb, we made breakfast and began planning our day. When Bianca anticipated Erika’s needs before even she knew them (in this case, a spoon for her tea and milk), Erika was overwhelmed with love that she burst into tears and ran to grab the rings. We then spent the rest of the week walking around southeast Ireland hand in hand and giddy for the future.

One of our favorite parts of the engagement process was getting our rings designed. Although it seemed daunting, the whole journey was much more heartwarming and exciting than we could've thought. We chose sapphires as our main stones because those are both of our birthstones. Although our rings look very different from each other, they incorporated similar design elements that reflect our story and tie into each other. Betsy, our designer, gave us plenty of notes for each of her sketches, but we were most moved by her below note. "Symbolically, I was inspired by the way you both were with one another, the ease, the support, the love, the presence you committed yourselves to. I was drawn to your willingness to see where this thing you created could go and drawn to your desire to celebrate its uniqueness through this work. My goal, then, was to express that through each design, individually and as a pairing. I hope you see and feel that in each design because ultimately it was transferred from you by me into each piece."