Bohdan and I just so happened to be coming off of a Hinge break right at the same time. When Bohdan re-downloaded the app, I was the first person that popped up as his "most compatible" match. One of my prompts was "Looking for someone that is always up to do something fun" and Bohdan's first message to me was "You know what they say, engineers... life of the party lol. What's fun for you?" I may be the only one reading this and laughing, but I still think that's so funny. Our first date was on 1/7/24 for a Sunday lunch at El Patio in Elgin, IL. On my walk to the restaurant, a man started walking next to me and talking to me in Spanish. Bohdan was walking from a different parking lot and when he saw me, he thought "oh boy, she brought her dad. Let's just get through this". The man walked past the restaurant and Bohdan was relieved that I did not bring my father to our first date and was impressed that I could speak enough Spanish to have a random conversation on the street. Lunch was awkward. The conversation fell flat so many times. So awkward that I already admitted to stalking Bohdan online before we met up (a girl has to stay safe out there). But Bohdan still saw something in me and asked me to go for a walk with him... in the freezing January cold. The conversation got so much better. We talked for HOURS (and got out of the cold). We talked so much that it felt like we had gotten through every conversation topic possible. 7.5 hours later, we realized we had skipped dinner and that we needed to separate because we had work the next day. After that day, we saw each other just about every single day. It felt crazy that things could feel so perfect with someone. The phrase "when you know, you know" finally made sense.

We spend all of our time together, keep our calendar very packed, and we already planned to get engaged, so I knew it was going to be impossible to keep the proposal a complete secret. However, I really wanted to surprise Sam to the best of my abilities. I knew we both wanted a more private proposal with just the two of us so I set out to find the best parks/gardens with great scenery, and set up 3 dates on our calendar so Sam couldn’t be exactly sure when and where it would happen. Even though she kept pestering me to tell her everything. Luckily I’m stubborn and like surprising her. The first date would be a fun test run. We brought a tripod and set it up in various locations to take videos of us posing. The plan being that when I eventually propose the tripod setup and posing wouldn’t be a give away in of itself. The 2nd date is when I actually wanted to propose, at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. I did a walkthrough in google maps street view to pick out possible locations for a good proposal spot, but unfortunately things are a little different in person and many spots I wanted didn’t have a good angle for us and the tripod to fit. So we ended up walking through the whole garden almost twice looking for a nice spot. Eventually we found a secluded area in the Council Circle and I did the farthest lunge back possible (by accident) and proposed, Sam had to hop forward to get to me and the ring. Of course we still went on the 3rd date to Lincoln Park Zoo and dinner at The North Pond restaurant as an engagement celebration. Copy and paste this link to see Sam's point of view: https://youtube.com/shorts/1sR7LgezB_k?feature=share