Christian and I met way back in 2017 the day before college started for our Freshman year. KU Arch was holding an Open House for new students to walk through their studios and meet their professors and I happened to be standing in line behind Christian. We shortly found out that we were assigned the same Studio class so we decided to go on our tour together. That same week we would find out that we were not only living in the same building at Templin Hall but that our dorms were also on the same floor! We spent a lot of our time working together on studio projects trying to survive our first semester of Architecture School, we quickly got to know each other and finally started dating 11.03.17.

This story is quite the chain of events. Christian had told me he had a ring from his Grandma June that he had inherited probably about a year prior. We had talked about what we would do with it and I ultimately decided I wanted to keep it on its original setting because I loved it so much. I had suspected that Christian would propose some time in 2023, but I really wasn’t sure of when he would do it. I get a call from my Mom some time in mid-April that Christian was coming over to talk to my Dad and ask for his blessing. Whoops! So now I definitely knew something was coming. I went shopping for something to wear for the proposal, but still didn’t think it would happen that month. Christian had been trying to get me to Lawrence with a variety of reasons, which felt very weird to me. I was fully convinced nothing was going to happen when he said we would meet our friend Halle for dinner and do some shopping before on Mass St. Come Sunday, April 30th, we were shopping in Phoenix Gallery and out of the blue Christian says “Hey, I just remembered my boss’s daughter has a project up in Marvin Hall. Could we go take a picture of it for him?” This should have been my flag of ‘something is happening,’ but I was completely oblivious. It was super windy and cold this day, so I had this big shacket on when we got out of the car at Marvin. I noticed Christian was taking a long time to get out of the car - weird. Christian was also walking behind me the entire walk up to Marvin - weird. I start walking up the stairs in the front of the school, not a care in the world, and I hear “Kim?” Christian is on one knee at the bottom of the stairs with his Grandmother’s ring right on display. It’s safe to say we were both speechless for a hot minute before Christian could gather “Will you marry me?” At this point we’re both crying, I say yes, there’s a photographer clicking at us, I was shocked. It’s such a precious moment to me to begin our next chapter where we began our first. We met our families down at Potters Lake, shed some more tears, and enjoyed dinner with some friends and our families.