We had our first date at French Meadow Cafe in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2014. We talked about books for 3 hours because #nerds. The rest is herstory. Thanks, OKCupid!

Laura, Mac and I went to my family cabin in Wisconsin for a snowy February weekend. Once we arrived, I started making dinner, and Laura claimed she forgot her charger in the car and went to go get it. Twenty minutes later, she still hadn't come back. After bundling up I went out to check on her, and no signs of Laura. Pitch black, no footprints, no phone on her, no response to my shouting. While considering whether I needed to call 911, she bounds up from behind the house. She had set up a trail of luminarias heading down to the frozen lake, where she proposed under the winter night sky. It was simple and beautiful, a private moment between us.

Julia proposed to me a couple weeks later in our apartment while we were getting ready to move into our first house. She let (made!) me sleep in and cooked me an amazing breakfast. When I finished, she gave me a 500-piece puzzle to do. I know to most people this would sound like an arduous task, but I LOVE PUZZLES so it was perfect. I finished the puzzle (it was of vintage National Park posters) in three hours. Then she laid a poster board over the puzzle. The poster had little holes cut into it to reveal letters below. Those letters corresponded to numbers on a card that spelled out "Will you marry me?" and she gave me my ring. We were with our beloved pup Mac (not obsessed, I swear), surrounded by moving boxes and it was perfect.