Will and I met a while ago in college when he was a freshman & I was a senior (lol). I honestly can't remember if we had a single interaction back then, but we did have mutual friends. I soon graduated & didn't see Will for years. He was working on staff at Island Community Church & finishing up college, and I was working on staff at Faith Baptist Church & finishing up grad school. He had plans to leave the country & my plans had just fallen apart, when Jeff Jones asked each of us to join staff. We "met" for the 2nd time at Collegiate Week in Oklahoma. Aaand it wasn't exactly love at first sight. We don't have to fast-forward long until the 2 of us went from coworkers to best friends. Will was *somehow* always in my office. I could pretend to be annoyed, but there was always something drawing me to him, even if strictly platonically at the time. We bore one another's burdens that 1st year & always yearned for the other's advice. Although, everything wasn't always rainbows and butterflies. It quickly became clear in Spring 2019 that Will was developing feelings. & I was running hard away from it. I even pulled him into my office that June to turn him down before he could even ask me out (we laugh about this now). That summer we got under each other's skin so easily. There was 1 trip in particular that we were both harboring a little bitterness toward the other. This is when I KNEW we could never work out (cue another LOL) Soon fall came & I noticed he was yet again treating me with abundant kindness, just like the spring, & it scared me. 1 month & more kind gestures later, I found myself pacing & praying out of fear at a local park. The next day, turning him down again. Immediately after, I knew it wasn't right. I called him the next day saying I was open. We soon met up secretly to talk about the next steps. I fell in love with his kindness, persistence &, most of all, his safety. I laugh at myself most of 2019 but now I love how it all unfolded. Praise God!

Will planned on proposing two weeks after the day he actually did. He secured the ring and was talking with my close friends and family & hatching a plan. On a Tuesday night, 2 weeks before the proposal, he accidentally broke his nose and I met him at the emergency room that night. He ended up having to have surgery a week later and the doctor told him beforehand that he would have to have a stint on his nose for almost a month. *Cue proposal plans flying out the window* That next Sunday night (which also happened to be exactly a year since our initial in cognito meeting to talk about next steps), we had a date planned. I knew it was coming that night because of the news from the doctor and I was so nervous the whole day, I could barely eat anything. That night he took me to our favorite coffee shop and we walked around downtown. He asked me questions about our future and what excited me most about spending our lives together. At this point we were both sweating. He took me to Beale Street Landing, which for those of you not from Memphis is essentially a giant grassy hill next to the river where you can see all of downtown. This also happened to be the spot of one of my favorite dates, where he had taken me to the top to slow dance to a Johnnyswim song last winter. Once we climbed the hill, he asked if I wanted to slow dance to... you guessed it! That same Johnnyswim song. All the while, i could hear my photographer roommate Tiffany’s camera clicking in the distance. When the song ended, he told me all of his hopes for the future and how his favorite verse correlates with Ephesians 5 and the meaning of marriage, and after stalling for a few seconds because people were walking behind us in the background, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Even though I knew it was happening the whole day, I was so excited and happy! He got me my dream ring and my best friend Hannah planned the sweetest party afterward with some of our closest friends. ❤️