Join us online at 5pm on August 29th for the wedding ceremony, cake cutting, and toast. Grab your own choice of drink and toast with us remotely! See more details under the "Schedule" tab. Copy this link to watch the video! https://youtu.be/N-LE7dxl0QI

Sarah and I met our freshman year of college at the University of California, San Diego. Her major at that time was Marine Bio, and although it later changed, I’m glad that it brought her to a school with an ocean (and with me). We are both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and so we most likely met at the church building the first Sunday after classes started, but honestly neither of us really remember when we actually first met. We later went on missions and returned to school, and only started dating a few years later. We were in apartments just across the street from each other in 2018, and I was already spending most afternoons doing homework in her apartment. As I was getting ready to leave her apartment one evening in November, I finally asked her out. I’m glad I did it without planning or thinking, because I was pretty nervous - we had been friends so long I didn’t want to mess it up! But dating life turned out pretty great, even when we were doing long distance the next year while Sarah was getting her Master’s Degree in Michigan. COVID-19 once again made that distance even more difficult, but I was later finally able to propose.

After a longer than expected time apart due to COVID-19, I made the hours-long drive across the country back to San Diego to see Jared. One day he answered his apartment door in nicer than usual clothes. I was already fairly sure he was going to propose that day (due to my super detective skills) when he asked me at 10 am about getting Olive Garden for dinner. What I didn’t expect was how nervous I would be. Jared made it even worse by giving me a beautiful wooden box with a golden flower inlay - and he said I couldn’t open it until after we ate dinner! While we were both nervous, it was fun to reminisce about our first date over a year ago at Olive Garden. Finally I was allowed to open the box AND IT WAS EMPTY!!! So much for that anticipation. Jared then pulled out a card which had a beautiful gold calligraphy M on it. On the back, Jared had written a thoughtful memory of our first date. He put that card into an envelope with a few other cards, but it wasn’t time to look at those yet. We got in the car and I had only hunches of where we would go next. He ended up driving us to various places in San Diego that meant something to us and our relationship - UCSD campus, the San Diego temple, my old apartment, and the beach. At each location Jared would pull out the next card, each with a new letter and a memory of that place on the back. We finished our journey on Torrey Pines beach where the cards had spelled “Marry Me”. We walked down the beach some more until Jared pulled out yet another card, the last card, which just had a simple question mark and nothing else. Jared then explained that while the future is unsure, he wanted to spend that future with me and make even more special places. Then, he got down on one knee, pulled a ring out of his pocket (I am not sure how he did that so smoothly) and asked me to marry him. Even though I am one of the most indecisive people in the universe, this was one of the easiest decisions of my life! And of course I said yes!