Dan and I met in Royal Oak after he moved from DC for his post-graduate fellowship. We lived across the hall from each other in a quaint 4-apartment complex. It was easy to get to know each better due to our shared loved of sports and craft beer. After several months of friendship (and many cool dance moves that impressed Dan), we started dating.

We had a trip planned to Barcelona for June and were looking forward to it for so many reasons. Once we arrived, we were exhausted from 24 hours of travel, but I knew I couldn’t hold on to the ring any longer (Shannon was also curious why I brought a “man-purse” to the trip where I was actually hiding the ring). We made our way to the top of a mountain in the northern part of the city. After we walked around, we had someone take our picture overlooking the city. At one point, Shannon’s back was turned, so I took the ring out and showed it to our photographer, who immediately switched to a video and got a great video of me proposing at the summit.