As Laura moved into the sorority house her sophomore year of college, she did not know that the move would also snag her a boyfriend. Neil and Laura met when Laura came home from class and he was sitting in the dining room of Chi Omega eating lunch. Neil invited her and some friends to a party for the next night. After spending the entire night standing in the corner and talking, they both knew they were smitten. After many months of talking and leading up to Neil getting ready to graduate and move to Springfield, Neil asked Laura to be his girlfriend on December 31, 2015. What an easy date to remember for an anniversary. From January 2016 until May of 2018, they dated long distance but were able to spend time together in Springfield or in Peoria. Finally, once Laura graduated they moved in together in Aurora and then the wait was on for an engagement.

As it may come as no surprise, Neil is not typically the planner in the relationship. Neil’s brother Adam was going to be in town so Neil wanted to make plans to go out for dinner with his siblings. Nothing suspicious, yet. Then Neil tells Laura that they are going to be dressing up real nice because he and his sister, Helen, wanted to take nice sibling pictures as a surprise for their mom’s upcoming birthday. So, in typical Laura fashion, she started asking questions about the details, and he had all the details already planned. The first big clue, when asking Neil what he was going to wear, he responded with, “probably a sport coat.” Which was suspicious because it was 100 degrees and July. Earlier in the week, Laura and Neil were at her parent’s house, and they were talking about the upcoming weekend plans. While Laura was telling her mom about the plans, she and Neil gave each other this look and Laura’s suspicions began to grow. On the morning of, Neil was acting very calm, like nothing was going on. Even Laura’s dad got in on the torture and asked her to golf that afternoon, “throwing” her off the trail. They spent the entire morning hanging out and watching TV until it was time to start getting ready. As Neil came downstairs from getting ready, Laura was trying to see if he had the ring in his pocket. They get to the parking garage, and begin walking towards the Riverwalk, where they were supposed to be meeting his siblings to take this “sibling photo." Laura and Neil get to the spot, and Laura could tell Neil was super anxious and kept looking around because he couldn’t find his siblings. Little did she know, he was looking for his friend Danish, a now groomsman, who was going to be taking the photos. Once they were in the spot, Neil says, “so I’ve been lying to you." He then got down on his knee and asked Laura to spend the rest of their lives together.

Neil wrote down his exact proposal first, which reads “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. So, Laura Christine Neustadt will you marry me?