Matt and I had a mutual friend named Stephen that had put in a good word with both us, but we had never met in person. That's when Matt planned and cancelled THREE different dates. At this point, I had given up any hope of this working out. A few months later, Matt knew my obsession with UGA athletics that he reached out randomly one Saturday and asked if I was going to the UGA/LSU baseball game. I decided to take Matt up on this offer and proceeded to head towards Foley Field. However, by the time I had gotten there, all of the student tickets had sold out, so I wasn't even able to get into the game. At this point, I was sure that this was fate and that we would never meet. That's when Matt insisted that I go to meet him at Smoothie King after the game. That's where we finally met after a long anticipated wait, and the rest was history. I'm glad to say that the wait was well worth it. :)

Many months and thought had gone into when would be the perfect time to ask Emily to be my future wife. I always wanted it to be a surprise for her. Emily's family has always gone to the beach every summer. This past summer, I acted as if my family had already asked me to go to the beach with them. I intentionally brought both our families together for this planned summer beach trip. That's when my mom planned "family beach portraits" for both families at sunset. Emily's wishes were always to have her nails done, cute outfit on, and hair done just how she wanted it for our engagement day. What better time to surprise her when all this was naturally set up for me! So at the end of the Bartlett family photo session, I snuck behind Emily so that when she turned around, I would be there on one knee asking if she'd marry me :)