Time: Four o’clock

In December 2022, I(Shannon) told my sister Erin and now Maid of Honor, “John Kosse came over for dinner and brought me rose last weekend” her immediate reaction was, “is this 27 years in the making?” To which I laughed off, but apparently she was right. Shannon’s story: John and I met the weekend of November 23, 1997 at a St Pius X Youth Group retreat at Camp Howard. John was already attending the youth group and I had tagged along with a classmate for the weekend. I instantly thought John was cute and by the end of the weekend we were officially a couple. We dated most of our junior year, going to both winter formal and prom together that year. Check out those cute dance pics! Like many high school romances we broke up but kept tabs on the other for years. We would message on AOL messenger, meet for breakfast at Dennys when I came home from college, but eventually lost touch. Good thing social media came along because one night I decided to go looking on MySpace for people. When I came across John I sent him a message that said “Hi, remember me?” When John replied, “How could I forget my first love?” It was an instant reconnection. After 5 months of late night calls, seeing each other when I came down from Spokane, I had moved back to Portland and we were back together. Unfortunately timing still wasn’t quite right and we went back to keeping tabs, seeing each other for a bite to eat occasionally and random texts/calls, seeing the others post of Facebook, etc Luckily third time is a charm so when we reconnected in November 2022 and were seriously dating by January 2023 we knew this time it was forever. John proposed with my Grandma Colleen’s wedding band on June 20, 2023. It was the perfect proposal, he included some of the most important people in my life to help with the “surprise”. We can wait to say ‘I do’ on the day of our first kiss 27 years later.