We met on Hinge! Within the first hour of texting back and forth, we not only discovered that Noah almost had Kathleen's dad as a professor at UT, but that we both had the same favorite play: Arsenic and Old Lace. A week or so later, we decided to meet at a local coffee shop for our first date. For an hour and a half we were completely lost in conversation; it was going great. Soon, however, we noticed the coffee shop had closed and the baristas were too nice to tell us to get the heck out! After awkwardly standing outside the coffee shop for a few minutes, both secretly hoping the other wanted to continue hanging out, we made a plan to go to Noah's favorite bar. Fast forward three more hours of conversation, laughter, and smiles; we both knew that this was something special. Even if her mom was wary of online dates...

Every so often we go on a "Fancy Date". We dress up, go out to a nice restaurant and...act fancy? After spending months designing and procuring the ring, I knew the next fancy date was the night to pop the question! But as a planner...I knew that's exactly what Kathleen would expect. So, my plan was to have exactly no plan whatsoever. My thinking being, if I don't know what's coming next, then she can't either. The night before the proposal, I asked Kathleen if tomorrow would be a good night for a fancy date, she said yes; phase 1 complete! The next night I put the ring in my pocket, looked at the mirror, and told myself, "You don't have to use it tonight if you don't want to"...after all I literally had no plan. During dinner we started talking about driving around to look at Christmas lights, something we had been meaning to do for a few weeks... Oh! Travis Park has great lights, and a beautiful Christmas tree, I could do it there! A plan began to take shape, but I couldn't be too predictable... I remarked to Kathleen that the Riverwalk had great Christmas lights and that we could go see them after dinner (knowing that proposing Travis Park would be a dead giveaway). She agreed, and after we finished dinner we were off. Phase 2 complete! After parking, we walked, hand in hand, around the riverwalk for a while admiring the beautiful lights. When we reached a map of the riverwalk I denoted how close we were to Travis Park, reminiscing about how one year prior we had walked around it after a play at the Majestic Theater. "You want to walk over?" If she said no, that would be fine, I would just do it another day...no problem. "Yeah! That would be nice." Phase 3 complete...I'm getting nervous...it's happening... On the way to the park, something reminded Kathleen she can (and loves to) speak in an Irish accent. In typical Kathleen fashion, we conversed in Irish accents for two minutes proceeding me getting down on one knee, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

When Noah asked about going on a fancy date, I was super excited. I love fancy dates. As I got ready to go out that night, it occurred to me: What if Noah proposes tonight? But then...nah, if he was proposing, he would have more of a plan. He had only asked about the date last night, and we didn't even know where we were going to eat yet. Couldn't be. I pushed it out of my mind and finished getting dressed up. We decided to go to Whiskey Cake for dinner, and Noah suggested going downtown to look at Christmas lights afterwards, which I LOVE to do. I eagerly agreed. It was a cold night for San Antonio but beautiful nonetheless. We walked along the Riverwalk for a while, admiring the lights and enjoying the night together. Being a little directionally challenged, I wasn't sure exactly where we had walked to, and we stopped to look at a map together. Noah pointed out Travis Park, a cute park downtown we had been to together before. He asked if I wanted to head that way. I was pretty cold, but I was enjoying our time together and wasn't quite ready for the night to end, so I agreed. We meandered that way, holding hands and making jokes. When we got to the park, we circled the big Christmas tree they had set up in the middle. Noah wanted to get a picture and asked a woman nearby to take it for us. We put our arms around each other and smiled. I thought Noah was going to step forward to take his phone, but then he sort of side-stepped, faced away for a split-second, started kneeling and...OH! What! It's happening! I almost didn't hear the question; I was so surprised. "Really?!?!" "What do you mean 'really?' Of course, really!!!" "Well, then yes!!!"