In the era of Covid where restaurants were shut down, Taylor and I matched on a dating app. Our first date involved cooking dinner together at his house and there began our journey. There was the era of house renovations as Taylor and his friend, Jake, took on a fixer upper in Minneapolis. Stepping on rusty nails…Tetanus shots…late nights and long hours scraping wall paper….plenty of opportunities for bonding. From many cabin trips to car adventures and everything in between, life fell into place in a beautiful way that neither one of us could have predicted. We've traveled the world. We have a precious little family with our cats, Leia and Calvin. We made our house into a home. Now, here we are, almost 5 years later, getting ready for our wedding. Love has a funny way of finding you when you least expect it but thank goodness for the way it found us and created this beautiful life we are sharing.

Flashback to September...while opening presents on my birthday, Taylor sent a text to my phone with a screenshot of plane tickets. The destination? Dubai. We were going to check off two bucket list items in one ultimate UAE trip- exploring Dubai and an F1 race in Abu Dhabi. Flashforward to December...we had one of our longest travel days to date and safely landed in the UAE on December 3rd bright and early at 1am. We made our way to the hotel and got a few hours of sleep before beginning to explore. We navigated our way over to the Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa area. Unbeknownst to me, it was at this time Taylor began to scope out the area he spent the last few months planning to propose at. We wandered the whole boardwalk and took in all of the views. That night we decided we were going to wake up and find a coffee shop for breakfast the next morning. Wednesday, December 4th, we woke up and Taylor did not sleep a wink. Laying on his chest in the morning, the nurse in me had made note Taylor's heart was racing and began to wonder where one would get medical help if need be. In Taylor's head, he was panicking because the place he was going to propose was insanely busy the night before. We decided to dress "cute" for our date. Hint number one I was absolutely oblivious to. As we were getting ready to head out, Taylor pulled out a fanny pack to "store our passports" while we were out and about. Hint number two I was, again, absolutely oblivious to. We began our walk and found a spot on the boardwalk to take a selfie in front of the Burj Khalifa. While I turned around to scope out the view, Taylor walked to go put down the fanny pack. When I turned back around, Taylor was pulling the ring box out of the fanny pack and the rest was history. Taylor truly did pull off the ultimate surprise...and even managed to line up a photographer halfway across the world for this special day. The sky was perfectly blue and there were only few people out that morning...quite contrary to the night before. It still all feels so surreal but we are beyond excited to begin this journey together as Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Oh and the coffee shop we went to? Tim Horton's. Best coffee date of our lives.