We could not be more grateful for the profound kindness the Lord has showed us in leading us to each other, especially given that our paths had already crossed years before we ever spoke! While Christian didn’t know it at the time, Erin first saw him on the dance floor at a spring 2021 formal for his SMU fraternity when she was a freshman and he was a senior (it will never fail to make Christian laugh that Migos’ Pure Water was the backdrop for Erin’s first sight of her future husband). We overlapped at SMU, ran in similar circles, and shared mutual friends, but it took three and a half more years of Erin wrapping up school and Christian kicking off his career for us to officially meet. We were introduced by mutual friends who ran into Christian on the Katy Trail while he was on a work call, exceptionally on-brand for him, and then again at church. Not long after, Christian reached out and asked Erin to dinner at D.L. Mack’s, assuming it would be a safe option for a Park Cities native (Erin had never been). What was supposed to be a straightforward blind date on October 3rd, 2024 turned into over three hours of conversation, ending with us as the last two people in the restaurant (special thanks to our waitress who extended the night by offering free dessert), and Erin agreeing to Christian’s request to “run this back again sometime.” By our fourth date (dinner at Cindi’s followed by Andy’s), Erin knew she didn’t want to waste time on this random guy from Tennessee if he didn’t share the same convictions, and started asking Christian what he believed a husband and father should be and what a wife and mother should be. Thankfully, we were on the same page; we ended up sitting in the Andy’s parking lot talking for hours, long enough that Christian kept Erin out an hour past her bedtime (she finally made it home at 10pm). On our fifth date at the Dallas Farmers Market, Christian told Erin (despite earning a salary for his communication abilities) that he wanted to “put a capital G on it.” While Erin knew there was something meaningful growing between us, she wanted to know and ask more before she was ready to make things official. A few weeks later, after more dates and many more conversations, Erin told Christian on November 17th that she was ready to be his girlfriend. We spent our early months learning how to balance demanding jobs, navigate grad school applications, and figuring out how to love each other well in real life. And in retrospect, how clearly the Lord’s hand was placed on those first few months of change and challenge has been one of our biggest encouragements as we move towards marriage. About eight months into dating, we started reading Tim and Kathy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage together, going through a chapter weekly at La La Land before church to talk through what we were learning. While we wanted to wrap our heads around the weight and gravity of the step we’d be taking together, we certainly weren’t deterred by it given that Erin bought a ring sizer on Amazon while sitting at our favorite La La table finishing the book. Christian proposed on November 8, 2025, at the end of a memory trail through some of the more meaningful places in our relationship. He gave Erin a letter at La La Land to start (where Erin quickly realized she hadn’t dressed up for a fall influencer event), her high school friends took her to the park where we celebrated six months and gave her another letter, and her community group of SMU friends took her to the Farmers Market where she read another letter. She was finally dropped off to Christian at Winfrey Point on White Rock Lake, where he asked Erin to marry him after reading one last letter and giving her a Bible printed with her future name. We are thankful for the community of friends and family who have supported us from our first date to our engagement and now as we approach our wedding. We look forward to celebrating our official union as husband and wife with you!