It all started on a nice day in October of 2022, October 22nd to be exact. Anthony and I didn't even know each other existed but when a group of people from campus fellowship went hiking at Ledges, he and I both decided to go. At first I didn't notice him too much. I was too busy sprinting through the woods with a couple of the other people. After ledges though we went to one of the girl’s houses. While we were there, I saw Anthony talking to the girl's mom and thanking her for letting us come over. I remember just thinking "wow that guy is being so nice and polite!" But OBVIOUSLY I didn't talk to him, who do you think I am?! So, I noticed him, thought he was nice and cute, but I wouldn't say I had feelings for him at this time. The following semester Anthony ended up being in the same Bible study as my roommate at the time. This meant that he was over at our house a good amount for worship nights and other hangouts their Bible study had. One of the first times they came over I came home from work and his car was parked in my spot in the driveway. I went inside and said "uhh could whoever is parked in the driveway please move so I can park my car?" As we were walking out to move our cars Anthony said, "how are you, Nicole?" I was so amazed and flattered that he remembered my name that it may be the moment I first fell for him. We then proceeded to not talk to each other for a few months until somehow, we ended up in a group of people that watched movies together every Saturday night. Seeing each other at that and becoming "friends" (even though we didn't interact much) opened up the door to us chatting every week at midweek. Usually, it was just Anthony sharing random animal facts while I listened. I wasn't typically one of the people to stay until they were closing up, but I would stay late every week just to talk to him. At this point I still didn't think he saw me as anything more than a friend and I honestly had myself convinced he barely saw me as that. So, how did we actually end up hanging out one-on-one? Well, one day he asked about my testimony while we were with some other people, and I gave him the vaguest answer I possibly could have. Later I sent him a snapchat saying that I would be happy to share it with him sometime that we weren't around a lot of other people. And later that week we were sitting under a nice tree on campus (a tree that comes up again later in our story ;) where we talked for hours. From there we just started hanging out more and more, we got coffee, watched movies, looked at random houses on Zillow until 2 in the morning, and just talked. One night while we were hanging out Anthony leaned over to me and said "So, I think I like you" I laughed because I'm awkward and replied, "I think I like you too." A few days later we went to ledges on our first date, and I never wanted that day to end. That's how one normal day in October led us to what will be the most perfect October day just two years later.

How I knew that Nicole was the one was a pretty short road. I figured out early on how similar we are in the way we make fart jokes and stupid references only one of us could laugh at. I knew Nicole was the one when we spent basically both of our entire summers together in 2023. She would constantly think of new ideas and crafts so we could do something enticing together. I've never met someone so adventurous and always ready for some big plans or trips like her before, she is quite literally ALWAYS planning. Her character is one of warmth, and Nicole takes quite a while to become accustomed to showing a lot of her hilarious, spontaneous, and loving care to you unless you've known her for a while. Nicole is someone who is to the point, sporadic, a perfectionist, sensitive, and very expressive of her emotions and wants. On the contrary, I am very independent, patient, go with the flow, a bottler of emotions and feelings, and a little bit too apathetic to the when where, and how of whatever is going on. This meant that even though we have a lot of ideological similarities and desires, we are pretty much opposites in personality. Nevertheless, Nicole has made a lot of effort to know and understand how I function, places a large emphasis on making sure I'm not upset, and gives me a lot of care that I don't deserve. Nicole has always had a strong heart of forgiveness and wants to never have bad blood. She always wants conflicts to be buried, and for us to go on and continue to love each other unconditionally. Her thoughtfulness towards hangouts and her planning brain make date nights more than just sitting around and playing video games/watching T.V., (which is something I fall VERY victim to) instead has a lot of ideas on how we can make hanging out special. I appreciate Nicole for her ability to make things the exact way she wants and I’m simply there to support her, for that suits both of our personalities very well. I’m pretty sure that I knew she was the one sometime in July or August a couple months after we started dating, and from then I would start to plan ways in which I could propose and we could get married. From when we met and started to hangout only about once or twice a week as friends till now, I still love her so much and am very blessed to have a woman like her in my life.

Everyone always asks the question, “so how did you know you guys want to get married?” I’m finally going to give a good answer instead of just awkwardly stumbling over my words. After three months of dating Anthony and I knew we wanted to get married. Six months in we talked to our paster about next steps and then spent the next few months talking to each other about everything from how often we’d want to have friends over to how much TV we would let our future kids watch. On our nine month anniversary we got engaged. I have never felt more confident about a decision than I did saying yes to him. I think anyone who has met Anthony can see why I was drawn to him in the beginning. He’s always going out of his way to make other people smile by cracking jokes and asking them how they have been recently. And while being funny, outgoing, and caring are great personality traits, those aren’t the reasons I fell in love with him. Throughout our entire relationship Anthony has always challenged me to be a better person, whether that be through encouraging me to read my Bible consistently, praying with me, or reminding me to not take the little things in life so seriously. His love for God and others shines through every day and is a huge encouragement for me. He is also the most patient man I have ever met. He’ll sit and listen to me talk about one of my many hobbies or cry about something silly for as long as I need him to (and sometimes that can be awhile). If you have spent any significant time with Anthony, you know that he’s constantly serving the people around him. I could keep talking about him for a long time so to sum it up, I know that every day I’m with him he will bring me closer to Christ, put my needs above his own, and strive to love me and serve me as best as he can. Knowing those things about him is what showed me that I wanted to marry him one day.

When I was looking to propose to Nicole I had to get creative because I made a crucial mistake, telling her I bought the ring as a way of cheering her up. This led her to be very vigilant making proposals pretty much impossible without her knowing. Every Saturday she had the intention of dressing up, doing her nails, and making sure everything was perfect “just in case” and she would constantly ask me if I was going to propose. To create the right setting to catch her off guard, I started to plot how I would try and make the proposal seamless and surprising. I began by asking my roommate, Colin to be the one to take engagement photos, and created code to text to each other that was overly elaborate and awkward to understand so that Nicole wouldn’t be able to figure out that I was planning to propose to her. I then had to find the place to propose, which I decided a while back, would be the tree we first started talking to each other under on campus. Finally, I had to make up a reason for us to be there, which took quite a bit of thinking. The idea I came up with would be to say that I needed to print something for DnD and needed a printer, therefore we would have to go to campus to use it. To cover any holes that may happen, I even asked Nicole’s parents to both come up with the alibi that they had no ink left in their printers, making it impossible for us to have any other options but to go to campus. The plan was all set, so all I had left was the execution. We were hanging out that Saturday (which also happened to be our 9-month anniversary) and I came up with the plan that we would have a hangout that day but she wasn’t allowed to know what the hangout was until we got there. Before heading to said hangout (dinner), I asked if I could print something, we went to campus, and I made sure to text Colin my elaborate code for “we’ll be there in 5 minutes”. With Colin in place behind a garbage can, I parked the car conveniently away from the library and told her I wanted to walk the long way. After almost dropping the ring box off the bat, I somehow snuck it into my left pocket and put Nicole to my right side. After walking up under the tree I led with “I’m pretty sure you know why we’re here by now” and asked her the question. She said yes and we were officially engaged while Colin took a bunch of sneaky camera shots. We went out to dinner and saw some of her family afterward as we went axe throwing as a very non-conventional engagement celebration. I'm so happy she said yes, and we've never been more excited to get married!