Gabriel and I met at a fall firepit night with our church in 2022. I had seen Gabriel around church and youth group but had never officially had a conversation with him. After the event, I went home and completely forgot we had met; he did not. Fast forward to January of 2023 where we met again at a worship night at Raan’s Coffee. Gabriel had brought his sketch book and was hanging in the back, drawing. After worship, I went over and started a conversation about art. Eventually, I invited him to come to Applebee’s so we could continue our talk. That night, he went home in a confused stupor. When his dad asked him what happened, he stared blankly for a few moments before saying “I……think I went on a date?” He later told his co-workers the next day that he met a girl a foot shorter than him who scared the crap out of him. (He wasn’t used to someone wanting to continue a nerdy conversation.) I had no idea if we would ever see each other again after that week, but the very next week, he took me to Denny’s. Shortly after this, I had a girls night with some church friends. We were going around the room and sharing fun facts about ourselves. My fun fact was that both of my sisters in law had Christmas-associated names (Mary and Holly). My friends immediately asked if I was going to complete the trend. Sheepishly, I admitted that I had just started talking to a guy who shared a name with the angel of the Nativity. Because it was the end of January when we had our first memorable meeting, Gabriel and I exchanged Valentines Day gifts that year; I even home-cooked him a pan-seared ribeye and gave it to him after our Wednesday night bible study. We said we would take it slowly when we started out, but we were getting to know each other so well, and I was building such a positive rapport with his parents and Yorkie, we eventually threw this plan to the wind and started dating for real. Our first few dates were spent at various high school productions, including SpongeBob: The Musical (one of our mutual interests) Mary Poppins, and Seussical the Musical (He enjoyed that one the most).

Gabriel and I got engaged April 10th, 2024 (AKA, my 28th birthday). He took me for a nice dinner and dessert at Sterling’s before walking me down to the river. After a couple selfies, he knelt down, pulled out a DnD dice-styled bag containing the ring, and asked me to marry him. Even though we had been talking about getting married as a for-sure thing up to that point, I was genuinely surprised he was asking me at this time, as we had talked about proposing the next night when my parents were there. My reaction was 1) shake, 2) scream, and 3) laugh uncontrollably, before eventually saying “Yes!” (He had to ask me if the scream was the only answer he was getting). We look forward to celebrating with all of you August 17th!