After many years of struggling to find a good Catholic man to date, I decided to pray the St. Anne novena with the intentions of meeting my future spouse. As God would have it, I met Rich only a couple of days after finishing the novena. The night we met, Rich and I were both asked by our friends to go out to be their "wing-men." In the hopes that my friend and his would hit it off, I purposely sat next to Rich at the bar. The more we talked and laughed throughout the night, the more smitten I became. Thankfully Rich felt the same-he asked for my number at the end of the night and the rest is history! And needless to say, we will forever have a devotion to our girl, St. Anne.

Rich and I had plans to spend the day hiking at Starved Rock, so it took some convincing when he asked if I wanted to take a walk through the forest preserve by my house before we left. I was so confused as to why he wanted to take a walk with a day full of hiking ahead of us, but then I finally realized what might be about to happen. He stopped me at "our spot"-a bench on top of a hill overlooking the woods where we often stopped to sit and talk. After Rich said many sweet things (including telling me that he chose this spot because it was on a bike ride early in our relationship when he realized he wanted to marry me one day *swoon*), he got down on one knee and popped the question! He had a bouquet of flowers waiting for me and we still got our day of hiking in at Starved Rock after too. We are so excited to celebrate this next chapter in our lives with you!