We're getting married!

We met as random roommate assignments in Makenzi's first year at TAMUCC. There were four of us in the apartment, and three of us were freshmen. Mandi, the only senior of the group, originally planned on keeping to herself and not talking to any of us. Her plans went out the window when Makenzi busted through the door, rather loudly, and Mandi went to investigate. According to Mandi, she knew instantly in that moment Makenzi was going to be her undoing. Haha just kidding, but she knew something would happen between us and that Makenzi would be important to her.

While Mandi knew instantly, Makenzi took a bit longer to realize something was there. And by longer, we mean a week. A few rides to the campus and one week of classes later, Makenzi was starting to feel the spark. Our school hosts a two week long "Waves of Welcome" event where campus departments and student orgs host events for students, one of which is the Beach Bash at the end of the first week. While our roommates went home for the weekend, we went to the Beach Bash. While there, Mandi (selflessly) encouraged Makenzi to hit on another girl. While a part of it was due to having no game, Makenzi chose not to, mostly because she felt bad about hitting on someone else while out with Mandi—even though we weren't on a date. In addition to a beach trip the next day, we spent the remainder of the weekend watching movies and playing the board game Clue. For those of you who don't know, the instructions for Clue says it needs at least 3 players. We said screw that, and played it slightly drunk on malibu mixed with cranberry juice. A week later, Mandi asked Makenzi "Do you like me?" to which Makenzi replied "I don't know, do you like me?," which also received an "I don't know." Only we did know; we were just worried about the logistics of dating a roommate. Despite our worries, we were together within the next few days, and the rest is history.

When we first started talking about getting married, about a year in, we agreed that we would both propose. When Mandi showed me her necklace and earring set (that she rarely wore), I knew I wanted to use the emerald for her ring, so I stole the necklace from her parents’ house and hid it in my lockbox for two years right under her nose. Summer of 2024, I decided to propose. When I dropped everything off with the jeweler, he told me it should be ready in about two weeks. Since he was in San Antonio, I waited until I went back a month later, but it still wasn't ready, so I had to get it mailed to me. Despite not having the ring yet, I started planning, in fact the plan was set in stone and a week away before the ring arrived. Originally, the plan was to go to the Botanical Gardens in Corpus Christi as a fake double date with a surprise celebratory party at home afterwards, but a few bumps in the road resulted in some last-minute changes. For starters, a couple of days prior to the big day, I found out Mandi was going out sampling for her research the day before and would be doing lab work until around 5 the day of; this wasn’t ideal since the gardens closed at 6. While she was on her sampling trip, I talked to her grad advisor, Dr. Larkin, who said he would try to send her home around 4:30. In Prime Makenzi vs ADHD fashion, I had the big picture figured out, but some smaller details were less finalized. I hoped to wake up early the morning of to clean the apartment beforehand and still have time to come home to get ready, but we woke up late and I wasn’t able to. Then, the outfit I wanted to wear ended up being too big, so I had to go get a new outfit, and I still had to write my speech. Luckily, I was able to write my speech while on campus, but I was still only going to have about three hours to do everything else and get ready—an unlikely feat, for those of you who don’t know me as well. One of Mandi’s many great traits is that she’s hardworking. Unfortunately, this meant that she refused to leave when Dr. Larkin told her to go home early, despite him trying multiple times, so she didn’t get home in time to go to the Botanical Gardens. Luckily for me, it gave me another hour to get ready. While I was getting ready, I had our friends brainstorming alternate locations we could go to for the proposal, and I picked one quickly, although I didn’t tell Mandi the location was changing until later. The third roadblock was that Mandi’s sampling trip left her with a sinus migraine, so on her way home she called and tried to cancel; had it not been for the surprise party portion of the plan, I absolutely would’ve rescheduled. When she asked why it was so important to me that she go, I stupidly said we were going to take couples pictures (she hates taking pictures). We went back and forth begging the other to reschedule/not cancel, during this I was still getting ready, panicking about finding a new location, and trying not to cry so much I messed up my make-up. Eventually, Mandi asked, “Is there some sort of surprise happening?” and I hesitantly said, “Maybe,” and she said, “Is it a big surprise?” and I, once again, hesitantly said, “Maybe.” While that was pretty much all the confirmation she needed, I later found out her suspicions were even more confirmed when she came home to a clean apartment. As we left the apartment, we found out the new location was also closed. So, while trying not to kill us on the way there, I picked another location from the previous brainstorm, sent a text to our friends, and put it into GPS. To actually pop the question, I bought Mandi a new set of cards for a German card game an old teacher had taught her. The only other set she had was from said teacher and was starting to get more worn down, so she had been asking for a new one. I wrote “Will you marry me?” on the new box and as I’m sure everyone can figure out, she said yes.

Within 3 days of us dating, I knew that I was going to marry Makenzi, and I knew that how I asked needed to be special and unique. As you read in our story we got to know each other through drunkenly playing Clue. If you know Makenzi, you know that she is very competitive and not a great loser (sorry babe), and gets very excited when she wins. What better way to propose than to hide the ring in the envelope? A perfect circle of how our relationship started to how our marriage will begin, right? Well, if you know Makenzi, you also know that she is impatient and not great at leaving things be, so she beat me to the proposal, and guessed how I was going to do mine. *Sigh* So, I had to regroup. By the time I could afford a ring, we had signed contracts, picked a caterer, a florist, a color palette, and were well on our way to figuring out the rest of the details of our wedding, so a proposal of marriage would be kind of silly. What is she gonna say? No? I still wanted to keep the board game aspect, as board games have always been a big part of my life, and Makenzi is the first person I met that enjoys them almost as much as I do. So, how do I keep the it a board game, while still having it be personal and specific to us? And even more difficult, how do I make it a proposal for something we have already agreed on? The two games I ALWAYS wanted to play that no one ever wanted to play with me are Risk, and Monopoly. Makenzi ALSO LOVED these games. So, I decided to create a Monopoly game with all of the places and people that are important to us, and proposed that we recreate it every 3 years (how long we had been together at the time). Aaaaaaannnnnnddddd she walked in on me working on it -_-. At that point, I decided that screw it, I am sticking to the plan. She may have known that it was Monopoly, but she didn't know the amount of effort and humor I had put into it. I wrote my speech about all of the invisible strings, all the fate, and all the bad decisions that led us to each other. If we had both done everything right, we would have never met. Here's to bad choices and the love they facilitate!