We are getting married!

Our first date was at Hoof Hearted Brewery in Italian Village. We got to know each other over drinks and spent nearly 5 hours talking that night. We both remember how easy it was to talk to one another and how we felt an instant connection. It was like we had known each other for years. The night was spent talking about friends, family, life, goals, good times, struggles, and everything in between. We knew there was something special and that there was definitely going to be a second date.

We continued to go on several fun dates at the beginning of our relationship. Everything from karaoke at Ace of Cups and riding scooters around the Short North, to watching outdoor movies at Genoa Park and seeing Dane Cook in Akron. We went to Crew, Blue Jackets, OSU, and Clippers games, and even took a cooking class together. You could always find us playing darts, cooking meals together, and doing any and all fun activities together around Columbus. After several months of dating, we decided to move in together and have lived in our house in Upper Arlington ever since. In March of 2020, we decided to add to our little family in the form of a gremlin puppy named Happy. While we have christened her the "worst puppy of all time," we're so happy to have her in our lives and she has turned out to be the best dog ever. Since then, the 3 of us have endured the pandemic together. Although we've been bunkered down for much of our relationship, we've still managed to make tons of new memories together. We took our first vacation to Saugatuck, Michigan, taught Happy to be a frisbee-catching expert, learned several new recipes, and renovated a lot of our home together. Throughout all of our time together, we've been very fortunate to become close with each other's friends and families and are very lucky to have such an amazing group of people around us.

I had been brainstorming different ways to propose for weeks, asking friends for feedback on various ideas I had. I received a lot of "that sounds more like a prank" responses, so I kept planning. I had the ring for 4 months before I settled on popping the question at a concert of one of our favorite bands, Chvrches. The band ended up not responding to my request, but I still brought the ring in case they called Christy's name; they never did. So, while getting ready for our holiday party at our house, I decided to tell Christy about the failed proposal attempt. I also told her that I wasn't going to propose that night at the party since I preferred to do it in private. That's the exact moment he pulled out the ring. It completely caught me off guard since I was standing in our kitchen, with wet hair, and still in my pajamas. He asked me to marry him, I, of course, said yes, and then I cried... a lot. It was simple and beautiful and perfect. That night at our holiday party, we surprised our friends by telling them that we were engaged, and we spent the whole night celebrating.