Our story begins on an app called Coffee Meets Bagel, which we're guessing you might have heard of! Unbeknownst to Nathan (who assumed the location status on Kelsey's profile was correct), Kelsey still resided in Santa Barbara at the time they matched, but Nathan didn't let that deter him! After a whirlwind of a first FaceTime "date," Nathan successfully convinced Kelsey that he was indeed a real person, and that she should allow him to make the harrowing drive from Orange County to Santa Barbara so they could have a proper first date. Our first date (to which Kelsey was 25 minutes late, a move Nathan will never let her live down) involved coffee, awkward eye contact (or lack thereof), a walk along the beach, accidentally attending a wedding at which the best man was a corgi (yes, you read that right), and watching the sun set over the ocean. The rest, as they say, was history! The past few years together have been a wonderful and somewhat clumsy journey, and we're looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together continuing to stumble into unexpected adventures!

A perfect weekend - a beachfront hotel, spending a day in Santa Barbara, brunch at our favorite spot, a walk on the beach where we had our first date, and a romantic dinner with champagne to toast to the new chapter of our lives that was unfolding. What else could we want in a proposal story? For us, a perfect day filled with memorable events and places important to our relationship. However, much like most of our relationship, things didn’t go according to plan. There was traffic on the way into Santa Barbara the morning of the proposal, so we missed our initial brunch reservation. This subsequently made us late to the engagement location (Butterfly Beach) where our photographer was waiting. We rushed to find parking only to find out that the main walking path to the beach was closed, making us more late. When we finally arrived at the beach, Kelsey was pretty confused (and hangry) about the fact that we weren’t getting food first, but I (Nathan) crafted a lame excuse about how we needed to walk down to the beach so we could get a picture before brunch. When we finally got to the spot, I got down on one knee, indecipherably recited the one-half of my speech that I remembered, and asked one of the most important questions of my life - “Will you marry me?” Thankfully we had a photographer since neither of us can remember what happened next, but the ring wound up on her finger, and she said yes! The next 30 minutes were spent taking pictures and letting the idea soak in that we had found the person we would spend the rest of our lives with. A good end to a chaotic morning - up until when Kelsey was instructed to jump on my back for a picture. We’re not sure how it happened, but a wave rolled in at the most inopportune time, and we both ended up in the ocean. Cold, sandy, and water-logged, we hurriedly left the beach, got in the car, and started on our way back to the hotel - a two hour, tear-filled trek. By the time we were back at the hotel, we had made a game plan to get the perfect day I had planned back on track: Kelsey would start getting the sand out of all of our clothing, and I would drive around a small beach town looking for a coin-operated washer and dryer to wash the only nice dress Kelsey had brought. Three hours later, after calling three laundry mats, going to Target to buy laundry detergent, and going to a bank to get coins, we had everything we needed to do laundry just in time to make it for our dinner reservation. The first day of our engagement went from chaotic to blissful, tear-filled to frantic, and finally ended on a romantic note. We went through it all that day, and we got a glimpse of how we will be able to tag team whatever comes our way in the future. While it may not be the “perfect” engagement that I had planned, reality was so much better because it fit our story and us so much better. P.S. If we had left 5 minutes later for dinner, we would have been stuck on the freeway back to Santa Barbara and would have missed our reservation. The northbound freeway was closed and at a standstill for roughly 4 hours that evening due to a fire, and we just missed it.