Like most modern day couples we matched on Hinge. I thought he was incredibly handsome with his little gold nose ring. Turns out that photo was 2 years old and he no longer had that adorable nose ring because of the Army. That first week we talked nonstop and decided on a facetime date, come to find out Evan took this very seriously. When we got on the phone Evan has freshly showered, styled his hair, and later I found out he even put on cologne. FOR A FACETIME. How sweet (': Meanwhile I had my hair in a messy bun, in my pjs, stuffing my face with icecream. After a few hours on facetime we decided I would drive 2 hours south to Colorado Springs, I was living in Denver at the time, and pick him up at 4am so we could summit Pikes Peak. I called Evan at 1am and told him I was on the way now since it was recommended on Alltrails to head out around 3am instead. (Evan thought I was bailing, quite the opposite) Needless to say the first time I laid eyes on Evan he had walked almost 2 miles to the gate on base so I could pick him up and we decided to summit a 14,000ft mountain at 3am. The hike was gorgeous, we ate poptarts and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, were borderline hypoxic by the time we reached the summit. He likes to say I almost killed him on our first date and that we trauma bonded. The rest is history. We spent every weekend together, either me driving to him or him driving to me.
We had built the ring together and just so happens that it was still up on my work laptop. Needless to say Evan ordered the ring and used my work info. This includes my work email and our old address. Andy from HR sent me a message asking why I bought an engagement ring with my work email. ANDY. FROM. HR. let me know Evan decided to buy the ring. How romantic. (shout out to Andy for saying the ring was gorgeous) Needless to say we had to update the address, email, and make sure all the shipping information would be changed to our new address. Then there was the issue of the shipping being stalled. I was panicking. I full on believed my ring would be lost in transport. (But when Evan updated the email I stopped getting updates. It wasn't lost, I was just no longer able to access the shipping information.) A week later Evan wanted to go "test out his new boots on a hike" to see "if they were truly waterproof." We drove to this super cute park nearby our house that has a great lookout point of Pikes Peak, our first date. After dodging the random crackheads he got on one knee and froze. Just stared at me holding the ring. I say "soo are you going to ask me?" Evan laughed and then went on with his speech. (for me to know and for you to guess) My answer was yes!
It's kind of a funny story. We eloped on April 15th 2025! We thought Evan was getting deployed and didn't see a reason to wait. No rings, No vows other than "I love you, let's do this", and a DMV appointment for a Marriage Certificate. Since Colorado is a self solemnize state, we were married in just under 20 minutes. As we walked out of the DMV we looked at eachother and said "well I guess we're married. Let's get pancakes!" We planned to keep it under wraps until Evan got back from his deployment, give us time to get rings and make it feel more than a trip to the DMV, but word travels fast and those plans soon crumbled.