It all began with social media and overly priced spaghetti. Now, you may have heard a variation of this story over the last couple of years and for those of you who we just vaguely said “we met through mutual friends,” we apologize (and to be fair, probably 70% of the people who have ever said that are also lying). We will now tell you the truth- mostly to avoid it coming up in someone’s toast. We DO have mutual friends, however, none of them actually introduced us. We actually met on a popular dating app and made plans to go to Noodles & Co. to meet up. We ended up sitting there and talking for over 4 hours- yes, that is slightly longer than the average time spent at Noodles according to Google (15-45 min in case you were curious). So thinking that this girl was incredibly cool and beautiful, I did the most natural thing and told her I just wanted to be friends. To which, Tiona replied, “Uh…I mean yeah…of course that’s all I was wanting too.” Well, one week later we were basically inseparable, one month later we were officially dating, and 6 months later we moved in together. Anyone who knows us knows that we are so similar in so many ways and yet complement each other perfectly. Tiona is the calm to my storm. Tiona on the other hand, would likely not make it to any important appointments (let's take Jury duty for example) if she did not have my Type A personality by her side. In all seriousness, I am absolutely amazed each and every day by the depth of our love and the pure joy that exists in our days simply because we are spending them with each other. It's been a crazy, beautiful ride so far and this adventure is only beginning!

So Katie and I had planned to do spring pictures in March just for fun. The pictures had been rescheduled so many times because Spring weather was so crazy! The last time we rescheduled our pictures was for June 9th. This was pretty close to when I wanted to propose, so I messaged our photographer and friend and we started scheming away. It took a lot of secret meetings, phone calls, and some misleading information to keep Katie off the trail (This was hard as Katie’s true calling might be a detective). I even suggested we cancel the shoot (knowing she wouldn't want to). So picture/proposal day comes and everything is running smoothly. We are taking pictures while our photographer asks us questions about our relationship and lives to get us comfortable. Towards the end right when the sun was setting, she says, "Okay, I want you to look at each other and tell each other what you love about the other, Tiona I want you to go first.” I knew that was my cue so I immediately begin my jumbled schpeel about how much Katie means to me. I get down on one knee and may have tried to put the ring on the wrong hand, but I blame that on the tears in my eyes. I was just thankful I didn’t stumble over her name! All in all, it went perfectly, she said yes, and I can't wait to marry my best friend!