We're so excited to celebrate with you!

It was a warm summer night at the University of Pacific (UOP) in Stockton, California in August 2009. Classes had not even started for our freshman year, but it was set to be a historic night as a UOP Alumni was set to shoot off into space for the first time. Unbeknownst to me, that night would be a historical one for me. At the Uni Center while I was trying to watch the live stream of the space launch, I met Julie through a mutual Hawaii friend (Josh). My first thought was she's pretty and quite funny and I ended up finding out she was living in the same dorm building as me. Later that night, the NASA mission got cancelled and the Astronaut never went into space, but Julie and I began our journey to the moon and back. A few breakfast dates and study dates later, it was time to ask her to be my girlfriend. If you think it went how I expected, it didn't. She gave me a flat out "NO"! As a devastated man, I soon learned that she was moving back home to Chicago. Julie would leave that semester and we would hardly talk. I always hoped goodbye would never mean goodbye forever, and I only wished Julie felt the same way. Then, magically one day in my sophomore year, Julie appeared at my door. She stopped by visiting other UOP friends. Julie was supposed to be hanging with some friends after an event was over, but lucky for me, her friends ended up ditching her. We stayed up talking and reigniting that flame that we once had. Julie would again leave, but then one day she messaged me on AOL Instant Messenger, "you should visit Chicago". I debated this because I had no money and no way to get there. I responded that I would come at end of summer. That summer, I had my internship back at home in Hawaii and I saved all my money to go to Chicago. Once I got there, we realized we both still wanted to be together. The rest is history; 6 years of distance as we traversed between Stockton, LA, Chicago, Sacramento, Houston, and now settling in Hawaii since 2017. -Mitchell

After buying Julie her ring, I already knew how I was going to propose. The first thing I needed to do was convince Julie to go back to one of our favorite cities, San Francisco. The second task was finding an excuse to bring her back to our first meeting place. Luckily, I had a friend living there (Thomas) and told her that we needed to meet him back at the University of the Pacific. In the morning, I surprised her, picked up the rental car, and made the hour half drive from San Francisco to Stockton, California. We arrived back at school where we first met and took a walk down memory lane. We eventually stopped at the spot where I first asked her out. Then, I told her this, "Do you remember rejecting me here 10 years ago? You can't reject me twice now." Afterwards, I got on one knee and said "Julie, will you marry me?" -Mitchell