We first crossed paths in the cafeteria of Mounds View High School as two freshman. This lead to becoming friends in our 9th grade Economics class (this is probably why I (Jess) could not tell you one thing about economics). Initially bonding over our shared love for Disney and the fact that I would be okay with watching Max play video games for hours, we hit it off and started dating. We dated for about 6 months as freshman, had the famous awkward breakup of 2008 for about a year, and started dating again right before Junior year. Since then we moved on to North Dakota State University for college and moved back home to the cities after graduation. Nine years later we are still together and looking to celebrate 10 years by getting married!

As you all may know Max is maybe one of the biggest procrastinators we have ever met, but things always seem to work out. When planning our lifelong dream trip to Europe, one would suspect this would be the perfect opportunity to pop the question. I thought it might happen but didn't think much of it. Little did I know before we left Max was designing my ring with the very same person that designed his mom's ring many years ago. In April we left for our great adventure, traveling across Europe checking some things off our bucket list. Max hid his stress very well, because behind the scenes the ring wasn't actually ready on time, so he (and his wonderful mom Jenny) were scrambling to figure out how this could all work out. The one option they had was to try to ship it to one of the places we were staying at and propose to me there. When Amsterdam and London didn't work out, Max tried shipping the ring to Paris. Sadly, this leads to why Max hates Paris to this day. Our hotel failed to mention that French Customs wouldn't let the package through because "they didn't know what it was made out of". His big plan of proposing at all these wonderful places quickly slipped from his fingers. Fast forward 2-weeks after we get back, Max and I are on our way to his family cabin like every summer. He claims there's a lot of traffic and he takes me a long way there, I notice where we are going and instantly know what he's doing. We arrive at Cascade Falls in Wisconsin, a once favorite spot of his Aunt Kristin, a loved one who recently passed away. There's roses and candles laid out at the falls with a bouquet of flowers (props to his wonderful sisters for setting this all up) and he proposed by the falls! I of course said yes and we had a celebration picnic with his family. In the end it was perfect and just how I would have wanted it (so of course things worked out yet again after Max put it off!)