In October 2019, I attended my cousin’s baby shower. As most of the guests were getting ready to leave, I decided to stay longer to spend more time with my family and their friends. When Josh arrived it was like “love at first sight” and I knew I wanted to get to know him. We each made a few attempts to talk to the other person without realizing we were both interested in each other. Eventually we found ourselves spending the rest of the night talking and laughing. We even found out that we had been in the same room, at the same time, on three different occasions (all relating to my cousin). Somehow we had never met each other though! Since he had the courage to ask for my number that night, I decided I wanted to ask him out for a date not long after. I chose to surprise him with plans to go see a movie and eat at a restaurant I knew he had never been to. The next day after our first date, even though he knew I was going to be moving very soon, Josh took a chance at asking me to be his girlfriend. While I was living across the country in Georgia, we talked everyday and even went on video chat dates. After an entire year of long-distance dating, and learning more about each other, I decided to move back to California. Two months later, we found our first apartment!

Leading up to Christmas Eve in 2022, we had decided to keep it simple and to not buy each other gifts since we would be very busy with our families. With his own plans in mind, Josh made a comment about buying a “small stocking gift”. After scrambling to find the perfect gifts (last minute), I was confident that his “small stocking gift” was no match to what I got him. The evening of Christmas Eve, Josh told me he would like to open our gifts then since we would most likely not have time to do so on Christmas Day. Underneath a few gifts, there was a small, flat box at the very bottom of my stocking. When I opened the box, I was very shocked, and at first I didn’t believe that the ring I was looking at was real. Josh got down on one knee, told me how much he loved me (while I was still in complete shock), and asked me to marry him. And of course...I said YES!