2000 Michael and Vanessa met while they were both students at Fair Lawn High School. A mutual friend thought they might be good together... and boy, was she right! They did everything together - Michael would follow the Winter Color Guard to competitions, Vanessa would go watch Michael's track meets and street hockey/lacrosse games, and they loved driving around to visit Weird NJ sites - they even worked at the Clifton YM-YWHA together for a summer! They dated for about a year and a half, but as Vanessa went to college and started living away, they decided they should go their separate ways. 2016 Fast forward 16 years- good old Facebook suggested that Vanessa friend Michael. Hey, what's the worst that can happen, right? Well here we are - almost five years, two dogs, and two apartments (and 20+ years) later... It's not often that young couples are anything more than prolific at the prospect of true love and marriage... and here we are over 20 years later, realizing that we had actually found our other half in our teen years. You know what they say... "If you love something, set it free." It's definitely come back to us, a hundred fold.

Right after Vanessa's birthday, Michael told her that he had a doctor's appointment. Little did she know, he was sneaking over to her parent's house to ask for their blessing. Fast forward to Halloween, Vanessa was working on projects in her craft room, and "a late birthday present" arrived at the door! Michael was pretty excited, and when Vanessa unwrapped it, she saw an amazing canvas print of them with their dogs in a Bob's Burgers scene (see photos). When she inspected all the parts of the canvas, she noticed that the "Burger of the Day" was called the "Cheese Said Yes Burger (with Onion Ring)". "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???", she exclaimed - and he was down on a knee with the ring out. Perfectly intimate and personal. Vanessa had always told both him and her parents that she wanted to inherit her Grandma Esther's engagement/wedding rings, and that's exactly what he proposed with!