We met at an event for the Bayside Young Professionals Ministry at Bayside Church in Roseville, CA. I was in line for dessert after the speaker and Will came up behind me in line. I accidentally grabbed two plates and turned around to hand one to him. We started chatting as we got our pizookies and went out on our first date four days later!

We dated in person for Will's last three months in California before he moved to Fort Leonardwood in Missouri. From that point on we did the long distance thing while he was in Missouri and later at Fort Hood in Texas before he deployed to Iraq. I would fly out and spend long weekends or spring break with Will. Little did we know that the long distance would prepare us for a deployment much sooner than anticipated.

Around July of 2018 we had been dating a year and a half when Will sent me a message that he might deploy to Iraq. The opportunity came out of nowhere as they just needed one engineer captain to deploy. He was chosen for the job which gave us about 4 months before he'd deploy. We started discussing the pros and cons of getting married before he deployed. We knew we wanted to marry each other, it was just a matter of when. While meeting up in Dallas over Labor Day weekend in 2018, we decided that we were going to get married. Woo! This wasn't how either of us planned it, but we knew it was right. My dad was going through treatments for leukemia at the time (he's in remission now and doing great!) so we decided to have a small wedding in my parents' backyard with just our sets of parents, my grandparents, and my brother. We had a beautiful celebration and are extremely excited to get to celebrate again with all of our friends and family!