We're Getting Married!

James and I met at a Washington Redskins game on December 20, 2014, the day after I moved home from college! Our friend’s family all have season tickets, so my college roommate, Katie, brought me to the game, and her cousin, Tim, one of James’s friends, brought him! We instantly had a connection, and he spent the whole game at Katie and I’s seats! After the game, he asked Tim if he could get my phone number from Katie and texted me the next day. After learning Katie was taking me to the game vs Dallas next weekend, James bought a ticket so he could see me again! After the second game, James invited his friends and I to Looneys Pub (a bar which he, and now we, would frequent while he was at UMD), to see who we thought to be the lead singer of Third Eye Blind, which we thought made sense because they were playing at the New Years Eve Party I was going to the next night. Turns out, it was just a guy with the same name… Everyone else decided not to go so James asked if I still wanted to go with him! (I guess you can call this our first date). We headed to Looneys to watch this random Steven Jenkins guy preform and grab some drinks. Looney’s was PACKED. There was no room at the bar or any available tables to sit at and I could tell James was starting to get nervous. Eventually we found one stool at the bar, so I sat and he stood as we ordered a few drinks and talked the whole night, even while Steven Jenkins was on the stage. (I honestly could not even remember the band/guys name and had to ask James while writing this). From then on the rest is history! Since we had an amazing connection since the first time we met, James and I pretty instantly starting dating. We actually celebrate the day we met as our “Dating Anniversary” since we don’t even remember when we “officially” started dating and it has so much more meaning then picking a random date a few weeks later!

I reached out to AnneMarie's best friend from high school, Glenna, along with her now fiancé Chris. I came up with the plan to have all 4 of us get dressed nicely and go out to dinner for the first time in months since everyone had been locked in due to the start of Covid. The plan was to go to downtown Annapolis and get a nice dinner outside then when the sun was setting we would go down to the dock for some nice pictures. Of course, AnneMarie was in no rush to get downtown not knowing what the master plan was so they took their sweet time getting ready and by the time we got downtown the sun was already starting to set. As we were walking up to the restaurant I said the idea to go do pictures before we eat dinner so we could get nice pictures. AnneMarie was very hungry and was not totally understanding why we needed pictures now before eating, but we were able to convince her. We get down to the dock but not to the furthest part out like I had planned because her feet were starting to hurt, and of course she still didn't know the plan. I had already handed the ring to Glenna to put in her purse and when it was our turn to take pictures we did a smooth handoff to get the ring box in my pocket. We start taking some pictures (with Chris secretly taking a video) and that is when I asked her to marry me.