As our SMU friends will know, it all starts at Corral! Our freshman orientation (called Mustang Corral) is a highly encouraged three day camp style experience where new students spend days playing ice breaker games and getting to know their classmates before school begins. We met the first day of Mustang Corral when we were placed in the same small group. Although we were together all weekend, we didn't get much deeper than knowing each others names thanks to the alliteration ice breakers (shout out to "Poppin Parker" & "Lively Lindsay"). When we returned to campus for classes, we remained acquaintances and waved to each other in our dorm (another shout out to Kathy Crow). We became much closer friends at the end of freshman year when we both went to Parker's fraternity away weekend in New Orleans. While we were not each other's dates, we spent the entire weekend in the same group hanging out and getting to know each other fueled by beignets and maybe a few too many Hurricanes. Over the next year, our friendship turned into more and by the end of our sophomore year we decided to give dating a shot. The rest is history!

Parker told me that we were going to be attending an event that his law firm was sponsoring at The University of Richmond on Friday night. The day started out normally, we both went to work and planned to meet up with his parents to drive together to the event at 5:30. Around noon the weather turned and it began pouring rain for hours. Safe to say I was not in any mood to go out in the awful weather. I reluctantly got ready for the night, grabbed my umbrella, and Parker picked me up to head over to his parents house. On the way, he got a call from his mom letting him know that due to the storm, a tree was down in front of their driveway, so we would have to go around the block and park by the river. As we got closer to their house, the rain let up and miraculously stopped. We parked around back and started up toward the house, passing the river as we went. The river was raging after the storm and as we were walking by I noticed a turtle on the rocks and wanted to get a closer look. Parker was thanking his lucky stars because I ended up leading us right to where he was about to get down on one knee. I was taking a moment to admire the scene, when Parker took my hands and gave me the sweetest speech that ended with "Will you marry me?". Through happy tears I said yes! We spent the rest of the evening celebrating with family and friends who flew in for the surprise. It was the best weekend of our lives! We're so excited to continue to celebrate this next chapter in our lives with you all!