It was 2018... Maddie landed an amazing job at Executivevents and through her co-workers, she had been hearing about this "Bautista" guy. He worked for their partner company and most of her co-workers were really good friends with him, specifically, Dani and Anna. They invited her over one night and said, "Bautista is in town! We're having people over. Want to come?" and she thought absolutely! I heard this guy is great. So she went over to their house and met Andrew. She didn't think much of it because it was a group gathering and he was friends with everyone (contrary to what Andrew thinks, he thinks Maddie had zero interest in him). Fast forward to three months later when Andrew and Maddie were assigned to work an event together. They spent three days in Vegas together, bonded over Lagunitas IPAs, partied at a T-Pain concert, and the rest was history.

We were in Barcelona, Spain celebrating both Maddie and her friend, Eve's, 30th birthday. On the day I was going to propose to Maddie, Eve's boyfriend Miro, also planned on proposing to Eve. We planned to propose at the park which was not too far from where we stayed. Prior to leaving for the park, there was a laundry debacle. The girls could not figure out the mini laundry machine for a couple of hours, as it was all in Spanish and we had used fabric softener, not detergent. As we were getting the laundry figured out, it was starting to get dark. We forced the girls to get ready quickly and we headed to the park. We arrived at the park with the famous last single man words from our friend, Miro, who said, "Alright! We'll reconvene in 25 minutes." Once that was said, Maddie knew something was up. She wanted to follow Eve and Miro because she thought they were going to get engaged and she thinks she is a detective. I was pulling Maddie towards a beautiful garden, as Maddie was trying to pull me while looking around for our friends. Eventually, Maddie gave up and I finally got her to the garden. She then said, "Wait. Are YOU proposing?" and then slapped my pocket where the ring was! I jumped back quickly thinking she had slapped the ring, and a few steps later, I got down on one knee, pulled the ring out, said some beautiful words to her, and asked her to marry me. Thank God Maddie said, "YES!" We're extremely excited to celebrate this next chapter in our lives with all of y'all! We'll see you in New Orleans!