We both were on a dating app called, "OK Cupid". Fern's smile and the heart sunglasses she wore in a photo drew Matt in. Fern was also drawn to Matt's smile, but specifically the humorous personality that was evident in his profile. We both swiped right, recieving a "You Like Each Other!" notice. Our initial conversation in the app was short, Matt opened the conversation with a song lyric by LCD Soundsystem, "Disco infiltrator fo sho". Fern told Matt how much she laughed at his shirt that read, "The Smiths" in the font used by the band, but had a family picture of Will, Jada, Willow and Jaden Smith. Then they decided to take the conversation off the app and exchange phone numbers. It was after doing that they realized, through social media, that they had a mutual friend they each frequently hung out with at the time.

We joked quite a bit on the phone leading up to an in-person meet/1st date. Animal Onesies were popular back then. Fern joked that there was a 50% chance she would show up to their 1st date in one. Matt agreed there would be a chance he would also show up in one. They laughed and then decided to meet for coffee in Del Mar. Matt arrived first, and bought himself a coffee and chocolate chip cookie. Fern arrived shortly after, and wearing a purple dinosaur onesie. They laughed, had great conversation and decided to continue hanging out beyond coffee. Matt drove to a spot that is great to catch sunset, nearby. Along the cliffs between Del Mar and La Jolla there is a wooden sculpture of a seat with an eagle called, "Sunset Seat". We watched the sunset, talked and laughed before grabbing chinese food for dinner.

We planned a backpacking trip to hike about 3 miles along murphy creek trail in Yosemite National Park, then spend one night on trail before hiking out the next morning. We ended up getting tropical storm-like rains on the drive there, and prepared for potentially ending our trip early. The rains stopped right after dinner, and we didn't encounter them again until we had already stopped to set-up camp on trail. Yosemite wilderness gave us quite the show, with heavy storms all along the surrounding mountain ridge, hues of purple and orange during sunset. We were lucky enough to only have light sprinkles for the remainder of our night. The next morning, we packed up and hiked back to our truck. Since the rain let up, we decided to drive down to Yosemite's valley floor to check out the waterfalls and take pictures. In past trips, we took gorgeous photos in the valley and thought it would be lovely to recreate those photos with the excess water Yosemite currently had. Matt brought our tripod, so we set that up and started with a recreation of our previous photos in "buddy cop" pose. After taking several photos in that pose, Fern got restless and wanted to switch poses. As she turned to face Matt, he was on one knee... and the rest is history!