We're getting married!

Early November 2023 Sergio (the best man) and I (Julie) got together to catch up. After awhile we started talking about how I was single. I asked Sergio about his friend that he calls Henn. I said “let me see a picture of him” he showed me a picture and I was immediately interested. I told Sergio to “hook a sista up” little did I know that he was going to message Michael right there on the spot. Sergio messaged me (Michael) “Do you have any desire to date or go on a date with Julie Petkoff?” That name sounded very familiar but I had never met Julie so I looked her up on Facebook and was also immediately interested. I sent her a friend request and put the ball in her court. The next day I noticed I had a friend request from Michael and I didn’t want to seem too eager and accept it right away, I wanted to let him sweat it out for a little bit. However, to this day we are still having the debate on how long it really took me to accept his friend request. I say it only took an hour or so. Michael thinks it took me all day. Once Julie finally got around to accepting my friend request I was nervous what to say. At that point Sergio had been less than helpful in telling me if Julie was interested first or if he was just trying to play wingman and set us up. I finally decided to resort back to the person that got me into this predicament in the first place… Sergio. I told him he was less than helpful in giving me the full rundown and that he needed to set up a double date for Julie and I to meet, because I wasn’t going to just message her out of the blue. To my surprise he actually set up a double date for the next Sunday at Lux Golf Bays driving range or as Julie thought a gun range. Now that I had something to message Julie about I mustered up the courage and said “Hey! So Sergio said we’re going to a driving range next Sunday? Should I practice before we go? Lol” I was out shopping and grabbing lunch with one of my friends and to my surprise I saw I had a Facebook message from Michael. I was nervous to read it and reply so I waited over an hour to message back. I replied with “Hey! I think I’m going to need a lot of practice before we go haha.” Michael also took a little bit to respond but when he did all he sent me was a picture of a burn barrel with a fire going in it. . .that’s it. I was a little confused by it as this was only the third message we had exchanged. I replied back as I didn’t want the conversation to end even though it made no sense. Later Michael explained that he had a message typed out to go with that photo which all made sense in the end. I happened to be outside burning some leaves and was trying to take a picture of the golf course across the street from my house and say something to the effect of how I was going to walk across the street and get a couple of practice swings in before our date. Well the caption to go along with the picture never went through, so I give Julie a lot of credit for keeping the conversation going and not letting it smolder out (pun definitely intended). We had messaged back and forth for the next week and before I knew it, it was finally Sunday. The day I would meet my future wife for the first time!

Something we look forward to every weekend is getting coffee at Boxed and Burlap together. This is something that has become very special to us lately as it makes us stop and appreciate the small things in life, like getting coffee with the one you love. I had been planning on proposing to Julie for a while but I was not quite sure how I wanted to go about it. I wanted to do it in a way that was both memorable to us and something that shows the timeless love I look forward to sharing with her. On one of our routine trips to Boxed and Burlap I noticed the bricks in the sidewalk were engraved with special mementos. It hit me like a ton of bricks (no pun intended) that this is how I wanted to ask Julie to marry me! I was able to get in contact with the Delavan Historical Foundation and they were more than helpful with pulling this off. I had told Julie while in line waiting on our coffee that there was a brick for my high school class outside that I wanted to try and find. While we walked out Julie was leading the way and scanning for a supposed “DDHS class of 2013” brick. When Michael told me that we were looking for a brick for his graduating class I was a little confused as it was a random thing for us to do since we had brunch plans and needed to get going. However, I was determined to find this brick. To my surprise I found my name on a brick but didn’t think too much of it. When I brushed away the leaves to read what it said I was in complete shock, and seeing Michael down on one knee left me speechless! It was by far the easiest “YES” I’ve ever said! Words cannot describe how excited we are to be getting married and that such a special moment for us will now be a permanent fixture in front of our favorite place to start our weekends! ☕️ 💍