Love

We met on the first day of Macroeconomics 201 at Franklin and Marshall College during our senior and junior years. I got to class early, picked out a seat on the side of the room and waited for the flood of incoming classmates to commence. With barely 30 seconds to spare a handsome man walked in with the swagger that only a fraternity treasurer could possibly display. His coat was unbuttoned, timberlands untied and backpack swung loosly over one shoulder. I can still picture it today. Believe it or not, I actually prayed that he would sit in the empty seat in front of me! That he did, and so our story began.

We had been working together on group projects in class for a little over a month. While I was the type of person who had every little detail of lectures perfectly scribed in-between equal margins, my fiancé was the type of classmate who intrinsically “got it.” He could somehow map out supply and demand curve shifts like he had been reading Neoclassical theory since middle school! Needless to say, I was impressed. So when the opportunity came to meet up outside of class I nearly jumped for joy. His fraternity was hosting a Valentines Day dance downtown and I was not going to miss it. Justin shyly asked me to dance barely thirty minutes after I arrived and just after midnight he kissed me. His fraternity brothers were so surprised that they took a photo of us together. And that’s the story of how we ended up with a picture of our very first kiss.

I moved to Michigan to work for Tony the Tiger after graduating a year earlier than Justin. We spent the next year and a half driving back and forth between Kalamazoo and Lancaster almost twice a month. In case you want to do the math, that’s over 1,200 miles each trip! Can you believe it? Often, I would leave after work on a Friday night and return home nearly 8 hours before work on Monday morning. About a year in we discovered Youngstown Ohio where we could meet in the middle for a day or two, thereby extending our time together. And while there was not much to do around town, we explored everything in sight from the local mini golf course to Dicks sporting goods which surprisingly, in our opinion, sold lots of guns. We were young, in love, and couldn’t be kept apart.

In the summer of 2019 we took our dream vacation out west to see San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, and Napa Valley. Our plans for the trip were cemented when we received an invite to attend the wedding celebration for one of our best friends from college. (Hi Megan!) Little did I know that when Justin planned each leg of the trip he had done so strategically: first the wedding in San Fran, then Lake Tahoe (cough cough), and last celebrating in Napa. Though I wasn’t in on the surprise I crossed my fingers and toes that he would pop the question. But by the time we made it to the last leg of our journey and he hadn’t mentioned marriage one bit my hopes were starting to fall. Then at long last, right before breakfast on our second day in Napa Justin turned to me and told me he didn’t have a ring yet but that he couldn’t wait any longer to ask me a question. You can probably guess what the question was and by now I’m sure you know my answer. I later learned that he had intended to propose at the very same dock in Chambers Landing Lake Tahoe that he had crawdad fished with family years ago. A couple months later we had an engagement party with our nearby friends and family. Up until the night before the event Justin had still not mumbled a peep about the ring so I teased him that I was going to buy a ring pop to wear on my hand the following day. The next morning Justin woke up early, brought me breakfast in bed, and got down on one knee. I accepted his propsal while crying a few happy tears. As it turns out, two proposals are definitely better than one.

01 - 2014 When we met 02 - 2014 Our first date . . . 08 - 2019 The first proposal 10 - 2019 The second proposal 01 - 2021 The wedding Slow and steady wins the race!