We're Getting Married!

Travel back in time back to 11:30 PM on January 6, 2016. It was winter in Chicago - miserable weather - and we were both hunkered down at the local watering hole with our respective friend groups. It was Thursday, and that meant $3 Bud Light pitcher night started 3 1/2 hours ago. Evan's friends were a few pitchers deep and discussing the hot-button topic of "how do you respond to a random guys late-night text" (use your imagination here). They had recently come to the decision to bounce their ideas off of other guys at the bar as an experiment, of sorts.. With just enough liquid courage, Larry was the lucky guy to have his shoulder tapped and, with a less than impressive response, it was the spark that was needed to get this love story started. Numbers were exchanged, and 4 years later we are here planning the biggest day of our lives. We may never need to worry about our late night texts ever again, but we have God and Bud Light to thank for guiding us to one another. We are SO excited to share our big day with you all!

We like to hike. Honestly, it's because our dog likes to hike; but nonetheless, we hike. We have a route - it's about 4 miles long and takes us about 1 1/2 hours to complete. It's rare that we spontaneously hike, and this time was no different. We decided we'd go out Saturday afternoon pretty early in the week and we spent all week getting Tiger hyped for her long walk. Saturday morning rolls around and Larry suggests that we take our Go Pro tripod with us to get a family photo to use for a Christmas card. Great idea! Now that Evan knows this, she rushes Larry along to get out on this hike before we lose daylight, but Larry is on a tight schedule because he knows he's just about to rock Evan's world. Evan rushes Larry, Larry stalls to stay on schedule. With both of us fully frustrated with one another we set off down the single track trail, over the narrow bridge, hung a left into Bloomer Park and up the sledding hill. We set up the Go Pro to take 1 photo every second (Tiger does not like to sit still) and posed on the bridge for the photo. Smiling wide, we captured our "Christmas card photo" and turned to face each other for a quick kiss. It was quiet - not a soul in sight - and it was the most perfect peaceful winter day. Right then, Larry got down on one knee and asked Evan to marry him. Her jaw dropped, she cried (duh) and what felt like the biggest surprise ever turned into the most magical moment ever. The rest of our hike was spent discussing everything we wanted for our wedding. We dropped into the corner store and grabbed a bottle of champagne to celebrate, but the surprise was not over. We got home, enjoyed our drinks and decided to head downtown to celebrate and call our families. Before we could get the phone out, they were all there waiting for us! We had the best time that night surrounded by our closest family and friends. It was a perfect start to our engagement and if that party is anything like our big day, we're all going to have a great time!