On February 11th I decided to go to a meetup event. This event took place at Captain Seaweeds in Providence Rhode Island. I arrived at the meetup ready to hangout with my current friends and continue to meet new people. I noticed this tall guy in a blue sweater, he was cute BUT I noticed he was talking to a group of people from the meetup group. In my mind I said nope off limits, I had this one rule I wouldn't date within meetups because meetup was my hangout spot. So after I noticed that I just went about my business within the meetup group and the rest of the night. I sat at the bar watching some of my friends play pool and to continued sipping on my drink. All of sudden he is right next to me and trying to start a conversation with me. I gave him one worded answers, had my resting bitch face but still he didn't take the hint. He continued to talk and ask questions so I just gave in what would it hurt I knew for certain this would not go any where, if anything we would just be friends and that was the main reason why I joined meetup, right?! We talked for hours, the conversation was easy and natural. The bar was closing and my friends were wanting to continue the night of fun at another hang out. Before I could say goodnight it was nice talking to you, he asked for my number...smooth right. I had every reason to say no because it was breaking my rule but I said yes because I knew he was just being nice. I thought he's not going to call me so it no big deal. Later that night while out he texted me to make sure I had his number. Two weeks later we had our first date and we've been together ever since.

We were going up to Seattle for a long weekend to celebrate our third anniversary. I had been planning to ask her to marry me on that trip for a while and I’d already taken her ring shopping so she knew it was coming at some point. But even thought I didn’t have the whole element of surprise in my corner she didn’t know that I’d actually bought the ring and since fortunately I’d lost my job the week before I was hoping it’d be enough to get rid of any suspicions on her part. I’d booked a spa day for us at a lodge that overlooked a waterfall outside of the city. I’d planned for us to get there a little early so we could take the trail down to the waterfall where I was going to propose. Not much was on my side that day as it was late February, so it was cold, and it was Seattle, so it was raining. Two things I’d hoped would go away just long enough for me to do what I had to do. When we got to the spa we started on the trail down to the waterfall but after not getting very far there were signs saying the trail was closed due to construction. Plan A gone. Panic setting in. Someone told us there was another trail that led down to the river the waterfall fed in to which I suggested we check out, but was quickly shut down by the cold, wet, miserable look on Cece’s face. Luckily it could also be reached by car so we took the short drive down to a clearing where you could walk out to the river. It actually stopped raining just long enough for me to stick my knee down on a river rock and ask her to marry me. ‘Spoiler alert’ she said yes.