We’re getting married!

On our first date, Ryan went all out and made everything perfect. He wouldn't tell me anything that he was planning, so it was all a surprise. We started the evening with a sunset cruise on the Intracoastal Waterway. Dolphins swam around our boat the whole time. It was cold on the boat, but the sunset was beautiful from the water. After sunset, we left the boat and Ryan took me to Osteria Cicchetti, a nice, Italian restaurant. I was so nervous that I hardly said a single word the whole dinner. After dinner, we got cannolis and went to a nearby park to watch the stars.

Ryan was visiting me and my family at our home in Youngsville. At one point in the afternoon, he asked if I wanted to go to Joyner Park with him. I agreed. We had been to Joyner Park several times before and always sat on the same bench because it had a pretty view of a less busy area of the park. When we got to the park, we went and sat on the bench. After a while, Ryan told me that he had something for me and gave me a small bag. Inside, there was an empty picture frame. He told me that he also had a puzzle for me, and he pulled a bag with a few puzzle pieces out of his pocket. He helped me to put the pieces together facing down in the picture frame. When I had finished the puzzle, he stood up in front of me to help put on the back of the picture frame. When I turned the frame over, the puzzle was full of pictures that Ryan had drawn of things that we had done together since we had started dating. In the middle of the puzzle, there was a picture of him proposing at the bench. As I was looking at the puzzle, Ryan got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I said yes!