Once upon a time, on an unassuming Monday, I got a text from an old Chicago friend and an unknown number. I was told that said unknown number was named Marshall, that he was moving to Seattle soon without knowing a soul, and that my friend was connecting us so he would at least know one person upon his move. Said friend texted me a few minutes later to very unsubtly let me know this was also a set-up, promptly breaking our longstanding “thou shalt not set each other up” pact and making me immediately dislike this Marshall human. A few weeks later, I’m sitting on the floor of my friend Lauren's house complaining about how this stranger my friend is trying to set me up with is texting me. She Googled him, informed me he looked short, and suggested I invite him to my work holiday party, seeing as I could ditch him in the 40,000-person crowd if he was horrible and she would be there to watch the action. I agreed, and since Marshall knew no one and had no plans, so did he. The night of the party, I got dinner with friends beforehand and whined about my upcoming evening entertaining a humorless gnome. Much to my surprise, a tall drink of water walked up to my table and introduced himself…as Marshall. Needless to say, I ate major crow, as Marshall is neither a gnome nor humorless nor a bust. We hit it off right away and have been inseparable ever since (although he would tell you it’s because if he didn’t make me like him, he was going to be friendless, and it was all horribly utilitarian). He charmed my friends immediately, swept me off my feet soon after, and asked me out as soon as he built me a bookshelf from Ikea (don't ask me what he got on that trip) (ok, I'll tell you, it was one set of silverware) (SOS I might be marrying a serial killer). I'm happy to add my first impression of him to a long list of my unfounded snap judgments, and in the words of the seminole classic Father of the Bride, he's wonderful and he's brilliant and we're getting maaaaaaaaaarried!!

After months of lying to Kate about my whereabouts so that I could design and build her ring, it was finally time to propose. I circled up our friends, and we decided on what would be the best proposal plan to maximize the element of surprise (I titled it "Project Beyonce," because I was going to put a ring on it). After a few days of planning, we were set. I was going to pick up Kate for dinner, surprise propose to her in Occidental Square in Seattle, and have a great after party with our friends. However, like most things that happen to Kate and me, a few more twists and turns just had to present themselves. The day I was going to propose, I got a panicked call from Kate letting me know her car had broken down not far from my house (unsurprising, if you know anything about her car). With ring in pocket, I walked over to her car to see if I could help, which turned into 3 hours in her car waiting for AAA to come and save us. While in the car, Kate let me know that she had planned on spending the evening getting dinner with friends, which was a surprise to me, since they were the very same friends who helped to plan the engagement party. To save the evening, I had to make up a story about some fake, fancy dinner reservations I had made us. Kate let her friends know she'd be late, and after we got saved from AAA I was able to quickly convince her to drive back to her house to dress up for a dinner and take an Uber (because of aforementioned car incident) to the area I was going to propose. As we walked down the square, I frantically texted a friend who had hidden to take pictures while trying to keep Kate from noticing what I was doing. After walking for a bit around the square to locate my friend, Kate finally turned to me to ask if I even knew where I was going. Fortunately, I had just located my friend, and this gave me the perfect opportunity to drop to one knee while our friend snuck around the side to snap photos. (spoiler, she said yes!)