Please join the Facebook group to connect with other guests. Lots of people are traveling to and from the same airport. Streaming/recording of the wedding will be available in the Facebook group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/470335571310624/

We met in May of 2012 at the beginning of a STEM teacher graduate program at UCF. Both of us had just graduated with science degrees from UF and UCF respectively, and needed a mental break before continuing our science education (or so we planned). We heard of a new graduate program starting at UCF summer of 2012 that wanted STEM majors. We [independently] thought it was a great opportunity to earn a Master's degree related to science while taking a break from their intensive studies, since it was only a 1-year program. At the end of our first week of grad school, one of our professors asked for feedback on how the program was going, as we were in the first cohort for this new program. After looking around the room and seeing no one raise their hand, I decided to go for it and raised my hand to give my feedback. There were a few points I made, but one that stuck out the most [to Brett] was the fact that no one knew each other and did not seem interested in interacting with other people since it was only a 1-year program. At the end of the class, Brett, intrigued by what I said, walked up to me and said, "Hi, my name is Brett. Now you know 2 people." After that, we made a group of friends at grad school and started to spend more time together in and out of class. Brett tried to take me out on a fancy first date for my Birthday, which was about 6 weeks after we had first met. I didn't think it was socially acceptable to go on a fancy first date, so I convinced Brett to take me Bahama Breeze for my Birthday. It wasn't until August of 2012 that Brett got to take me out for our official first date: dinner at Seasons 52, Cirque du Soilei's "La Nouba" at Downtown Disney, playing at Dave and Buster's. We continued to date for the next couple of months, officially sealing the deal in becoming boyfriend and girlfriend after an epic Halloween night at Halloween Horror Nights on November 1, 2012.

(1) When our professor asked for feedback, Melanie didn't raise her hand but just stood up and proceeded to direct her diatribe at the rest of the disinterested class. I was personally impressed by the brazen attitude and proceeded to introduce myself after class. Melanie was not convinced I had the best intentions at heart. I was able to convince her by introducing her to another classmate who graduated from FSU (despite graduating from UF myself). The speech also helped brake the ice with our other classmates who we developed friendships with and will hopefully be joining us to celebrate the wedding. (2) Melanie is also omitting the fact that she was reticent to attend a Cold Play concert with me around her birthday as it would have been an out of town/overnight trip. She still was not convinced of my good intentions at this time. (3) The 'Halloween Horror Nights' night was indeed epic. Details should not be written down but please feel free to ask. I think we celebrate November 1st as our anniversary instead of October 31st because it took us the whole next day to agree on exactly what had transpired.

Every Chinese New Year holiday, Brett and I travel. For Chinese New Year 2018, we traveled to Australia and New Zealand for our 6 week holiday. Before leaving on our trip, Brett had mentioned he had a surprise planned, but I didn't think anything of it, as usually Brett has something special planned for our trips. First stop on our trip was a liveaboard that left Cairns, Australia to dive the Great Barrier Reef. At the beginning of the trip while Brett was in the shower, as I was bending over to get something out of my suitcase, I happened to notice a sizeable black box sitting in Brett's suitcase with his hat on top of it. I immediately texted one of my best friends, Brittney, to tell her what I saw, brushing it off saying "It's probably some key chain" based on the bag I saw it in. (Little did I know Brittney was already aware of what was to come, since Brett had been in contact with her about the ring). I put what I saw in his suitcase out of my mind for the next couple of weeks. On February 18, 2018, we began our day with a nice tour of the Pelorus River, which is where the barrel scene in the Hobbit Movie series was shot. We had a long drive to our next destination in Waipara. After stopping to meet some seal lions and picking up supplies to make pasta carbonara (one of Brett's favorites), we arrived at a PurePod that as at Greystone Winery after dark. After having a bit of an adventure trying to find the PurePod in the dark, I cooked pasta carbonara for dinner and we both enjoyed some wine from the winery. Afterward, Brett asked me to go outside while he set up a surprise. When I came back in, he had a playlist of some of our songs on and set up a scavenger hunt, which ultimately led me to the black box I had seen in his suitcase a couple of weeks prior. Inside was a pop-up scrapbook of our relationship. After I looked through all the pictures and captions, Brett gave a little speech, got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him.

(1) I purposely placed a large hat over the box while I was in the shower so odds are that Melanie was doing a little snooping in order to have seen it. Regardless, I knew that Melanie's well documented guilty conscience would prohibit her from opening anything ahead of time even if she had seen it. (2) I definitely had more wine then Melanie did as I was severely embarrassed about how much cheesiness was put into the playlist and scavenger hunt. I knew in the end it would be worth the effort however. (3) I spent several nights "working late" to create the scrapbook box at school away from Melanie's prying eyes leading up to our trip. (4) One of the most entertaining aspects of the rest of our trip was Melanie's extreme fear that she would lose the engagement ring. An engagement ring I had a lot of fun designing myself with the help of IDC.