How We Met – Her Perspective: Serendipity is defined as finding something beautiful without looking for it. This is exactly how I would describe meeting Evan. My first memory of Evan was thinking he was so cute and that I loved his laugh. We met unexpectedly through friends in November of 2017; we all decided to go out for the night together in Tampa and Evan and I talked in the car on the way. After that night, I didn’t expect anything more to come of us hanging out. The next day, I was on a walk in my neighborhood and got a message from someone on Instagram. It was Evan! He thanked me for driving yesterday, and offered to pay for my gas (so sweet.) We started texting back and forth after that. We hung out again soon after where we got to know each other better. On our official first date, Evan picked me up at my house and we went light-looking (it was Christmas time) and we went to the movies together. The date went so well, he fell asleep in the middle of the movie. We began dating on December 15, 2017 and have been inseparable ever since. How We Met – His Perspective: The day I met Aubrey was nothing but God’s plan in my eyes. I remember telling my friend that when I had seen her I thought she was very pretty, and he told me she had a boyfriend, so that was that. A few weeks later, I was hanging out with my friend and he told me Aubrey was coming over, we hung out and I found out she did not in fact have a boyfriend. So, I saw a chance to slide in her DMs, and the rest was history!

The Proposal – Her Perspective: This was not a typical Monday! I knew that something might happen soon since we had been together over 2 and a half years, but I was not sure exactly when it would. We got ready for a night out at the pier since we had been wanting to go for a while, and Evan’s brother, Nathan tagged along (this would be to record the proposal for family and friends to see, I later discovered.) We started at the pier and migrated to the beach to watch the sunset. Nothing seemed to be out of the normal until Evan asked me to take a picture (he hates pictures.) He said he wanted a picture because we were dressed up nice, and I did not think much of it after that. I do remember thinking in the back of my mind that maybe something could happen, but I did not want to get my hopes up. We took a few pictures, and I remember Evan turning to look at me and before I knew it, he was proposing. “Aubrey Lane, I love you, will you marry me?” He did a very great job planning everything and picking out a beautiful ring all by himself. It was the best day ever. We celebrated afterwards with Taco Bell. The Proposal – His Perspective: Our proposal was supposed to be on the Anna Maria Island pier, but because of COVID, some things changed. We started out at the pier, then decided to go watch the sunset at the beach where I felt like I could play it off and it would be nice. When she wasn’t looking, I took a picture of her with the caption “If only you would know what’s about to happen,” then I asked her to marry me!