Seth and Katherine met as any good APU music students should- at the Men's Chorale Bel Canto combined beach day in Huntington Beach. They were playing volleyball and were on opposing teams. Seth recalls Katherine yelling at him in German; Katherine has no recollection of this. She does, however, remember standing in the back of the campfire worship circle (I mean, how very APU) which Seth was leading. Katherine and her best friends from freshmen year Kelsea and Anna hadn't met Seth yet, but referred to him as "Beautiful Voice Boy" for the rest of the semester. One day, Kat was walking near campus with her then-boyfriend. Seth and his then-roommate, Kevin, were also walking there, and Kat excitedly shouted out to her new friend Seth. Kevin turned to Seth and said "That girl is way into you," and Seth turned back and said, "Actually, that guy she's with is her boyfriend." The following week Kat, Anna, Kelsea, and another friend Logan decided to go back to Huntington Beach just the four of them so they could enjoy the beach and not be forced to wear jeans (if you know, you know). They didn't know sunscreen could expire, so they regularly applied lots of expired sunscreen throughout the day. They came back to campus and were the most burned any of them could ever remember being. The very next day, there was a Chamber Singers pool party hosted at the "Babe Cave"- this is the first day Katherine remembers speaking to Seth- and knew she was about to become THAT dumb freshman. She knew she could either be embarrassed by her sunburns or she could own it make fun of herself before anyone else could. So she went in front of a group of people (where Seth was), pulled down the side of her bikini bottoms and said, "Look at my butt!" In one fell swoop, her plan had worked AND she managed to make the first words she ever said (in her memory) to her future husband, "Look at my butt." Mom and dad are very proud.

Kat's favorite bragging right is from the Chamber Singers Fall 2014 concert. They were rehearsing before the concert and their director, Michelle, put the choir in a new standing order. Seth was standing behind Kat for this particular piece. They sang L.L. Fleming's "Give Me Jesus" in which Seth's part ended on a low Eb. Kat fell in love with Seth's voice, and- in the fashion of Maeby Fünke- turned around and said, "Marry me." Kat recalls it being purely funny to her, not trying to hit on Seth in the slightest; her then-boyfriend was actually at that concert. Seth recalls thinking, "The girl who yelled at me in German and showed me her butt just asked me to marry her?" Seth and Kat both agree that it was Celebrate Christmas 2014 when they truly became friends, a week before Kat moved out of her freshman dorm and moved back to NorCal. They bonded over their dinners sitting in a hallway at Lake Avenue Church. They kept in touch over the next semester, and Seth was always Katherine's first call when she came to visit her school friends. There was a day in February of 2015 when Kat was visiting campus and she walked by Seth, who was studying at the east campus coffee shop. What she thought would be a quick visit turned into a 5 hour conversation. Every time Kat was able to come down south, the two of them would grab In'N'Out and ask each other for advice. Many visits and text conversations turned these two from casual friends who would strike up conversations in the hallway before Chamber rehearsal to their go-to friend for awkward situation advice and someone to whom they could safely vent.

Remember that scene in Mean Girls when Cady Heron pretends she's bad at math so she can get closer to Aaron Samuels? Kat did that. Sort of. At the end of 2015, she was gearing up to return to APU and was so excited to jump back into her schooling and be back with her friends. She was talking with Seth about it and casually mentioned how she was nervous about coming back to school because it'll be over a year between Music Theory I and Music Theory II and she didn't want to forget anything. Seth was one of the school's best (totally unbiased) music tutors. She asked if he would be willing to do a theory I crash course for her before she came back to school, and of course, Seth was more than happy to help. He invited her up to his parents' home in the North Bay while he was home for Christmas break. She eagerly agreed and drove an hour and forty-five minutes in the rain to get tutored in a subject she taught to her own roommate. Seth and Kat spent all of 35 minutes going over Music Theory. Seth would go, "So you'll need to know how to do this," and Kat would go, "Yea, yea that's easy, okay, next?" They spent the rest of the day exploring Seth's home town and sharing funny videos. Kat distinctly remembers when they were first getting ready to leave the Velez home and watching Seth put his shoes on. She was sitting at the high-top counter in the kitchen looking at Seth put on his grey Converse in the living room. There was a Christmas tree set up and it just felt like home to her. She called Anna on her way home freaking out about how this felt significant, like she was looking at her future. From that point on the two regularly went vastly out of their way to see each other, from Seth making the a 2 hour drive to see Kat in a production of Little Mermaid to Kat giving up a day at Disneyland with her friends just to spend some time at APU.

When Kat moved back to APU in January of 2016, the two were inseparable. They found absolutely any excuse to spend time together. From binge-watching Gravity Falls to studying to Bon Iver's self-titled album to marathoning Indiana Jones with Seth's roommate Ryland to saving each other seats in chapel, the two spent time together every single day. It was very noticeable to everyone around them, and people started getting suspicious. So many people would pull one of them aside and ask if they were dating, that the two started a list of all the questioners. Whenever someone would ask them, they would laugh, say, "No, we're just really good friends!" and text the other, "Add ___ to the list." They each loved the friendship they had in one another that they didn't want to risk losing it in case the other wasn't interested. One night in early February, the two were watching GFs on the kitchen floor in Kat's mod. Once it hit that time of night where they'd usually say good night, they didn't. They both sat in the quiet and started to drift off a bit. It was that type of sleep where you've very aware of what's going on though. At one point, Kat got up to use the bathroom, but came back to their spot on the floor. Seth says that's when he knew she liked him, because she came back to the terrible linoleum instead of going to bed. In his sleepy delirium, Seth kissed the top of Kat's head and froze in fear. He was wide awake now, internally panicking at how dumb what he had just done was. Kat, who had been pretending to sleep, was also internally panicking. The two sat in silence for a couple unbearably long minutes, when Seth finally spoke out into the quiet and asked Kat, "Would we be proving everyone right if I asked you out?" Kat simply replied, "There are worse things."

-Maddy Newbro -Lexi Harris -Ellie Stelter -Ryland Talamo -Gavin Velez -Carly Tilson-Lumetta -Olivia Wagganer -Anne Marie Salgado -Izzy Garcia -Jasmine Lew -Kaleea Parungao -Meta Velez -Chris Honda -Camille Smith -Anna Lund -Justin Dent -Sean Gabel -Danielle Wendell -Casey Kim -Claudia Berlinn -Joel Santos -Kevin Frank

Seth wanted to make more than a moment for Katherine to have, he wanted something physical to attempt to reflect how important and treasured this relationship and future was to him. A music box seemed the perfect fit, so in October of 2018 he started trying to figure out how to make that happen. It took 6 months to finish, but by the time he was ready to propose, Seth had made for Katherine a jewelry box that played "Lady", the song that he had written her for Christmas. Ever the sleuth, Kat had already put the clues together and suspected that the date Seth was planning to take her on for Easter would be when he was going to ask, but she spent the entire week leading up to it fighting with herself in her mind trying not to expect it. The two drove into the city on Easter and up to the Marin Headlands for a picnic overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Little did Katherine know that their friend Hannah was already at the spot, ready to take pictures of the moment from hiding (thanks Hannah!). When the two got to the spot, Katherine set up the picnic and Seth went back to the car to "grab something", coming back with the music box. As soon as the song was three notes in, both Katherine and Seth had tears running down their cheeks and time seemed to stand still. When the song had finished, Katherine opened the box, unveiling the ring, and not much was said from that point forward (especially since Seth forgot to think of something to say, whoops). Family was called, the picnic was packed up, and the two blissfully traveled north to go celebrate with Seth's parents, a perfect end to the night.