From the bride: Jason and I met at Endicott College in 2019 and started casually talking that summer. Jason and I were texting everyday towards the end of that summer, especially during my cross country drive to Endicott. I specifically remember texting Jason as I was driving through Connecticut (unaware of the fact that he was from Connecticut), “Connecticut drivers are terrible”. Soon to find out, he was in fact from Connecticut. I strongly believe that was the beginning of our love story. Fast forward to October 2019 where we had our first date at the Howling Wolf in Salem, Massachusetts. We quickly shared our mutual love of chips and queso. Soon after that, Jason and I were caught dancing in our campus bar, Gully’s. On October 12th, Jason asked me to be his girlfriend. The rest of that semester was filled with parties at Bennett Street, a bowling date, the Boston Santa Crawl, a trip to Stamford (Jason’s hometown), a trip to New York City, and of course many visits to the Pickled Onion.

From the groom: Luckily for me, Rylie had a pretty solid idea of what she wanted her ring to look like. To make sure I didn’t screw up we both went to Sarah O Jewelry to check out some options. By the time we left, she had narrowed it down to 3 different choices but there was only “one” that she truly fell in love with and she made that apparent to me. I came back a couple weeks later, put the deposit down and then it was the waiting game. It took about 3-4 months until I finally got the call saying the ring was ready for pickup. During this time frame, Rylie kept nagging me, constantly saying, “Have you gone back there? Have you picked the ring yet?" exc. Little did she know, I was on top of my game, I was just waiting for the ring. Don’t worry people, I did ask Tim (Rylie’s Father) for his blessing over a nice lunch date at Chipotle. Who can get rejected there I thought? When I finally got the ring, my mind was full of questions. Where am I going to hide it? How am I going to ask? The answer to the 1st question was my sock drawer. I figured she would never go digging in there. Until one day Rylie made a comment saying she found the ring in the sock drawer. My face turned as white as can be. I just calmly said no and walked out of the room. LOL. My heart was racing!! We were going to a wedding in New Jersey over Labor Day Weekend and we were planning to stay a couple extra days in Connecticut and a night in New York City. That’s when I thought, why not that weekend? This could be it. I mentioned the plan to Tim and Vic and they were all in. I think they may have booked flights that same exact night I told them. I also mentioned it to Rylie’s two friends Cali and Maddi, and they were going to make sure they were there for the special day. Fast forward to September 4th, 2023. We were staying in the city that night. My mom dropped us off at the train station and I remember saying to her, “see you in a couple of months”, with a big wink and a huge smirk on my face, she was jumping on the train right after ours to meet us down there. I had mentioned the proposal to a couple of my buddies who lived in the city, and they made sure I knew they would be there. We checked into our hotel and I convinced her that there was a cool bar we had to stop at before we did anything else. It was about a mile away and not even halfway there, I was sweating. Rylie kept asking me if I was okay. But little did she know, the excitement and nerves were all settling in. Bryant Park was the true destination. I got the text that everything was ready to go. I said to Rylie, “hey why don’t we check out this park, I heard it’s beautiful”. Rylie was getting frustrated at this time with my indecisiveness of where we were going, but there was a point to it all. As we entered the park, there were rose petals on the ground. Rylie had no idea they were even there because she was more interested in the dog park that was inside the park… As we continued to walk the rose petals continued to show, and she finally started to notice them. Then the song “Thank God” by Kane Brown started playing in the park. As we continued to walk the song got louder and louder, thanks to my friend Julian who brought the speaker. This thing was massive!!! We turned the corner and everything was in place. I continued to walk to the fountain located straight ahead while Rylie was stopped by a shout, “Ry”, and she turned around to notice it was her parents. I think at this point she knew something was going on… I walked forward and grabbed a picture of our dog (Rory) with a bandana on it saying, “Will you marry my dad?”. I think Rylie was still in shock just standing over me, while having tears in her eyes. She said yes, well I think she did, and I got up from my knees and twirled her around giving her a kiss to start an amazing life together. The day concluded with lots of beers and laughter between family and friends. It was truly a day we would never forget.