Bryan had been doing projection for the church for years and Tamiara became interested in learning projection for their church's college ministry. He trained her twice that summer on some of the basics, but it was only a few quick sessions. Little did we know that God had something so much bigger for us in the future.

The late summer of 2022 brought us closer in several ways. We were both on tech teams for Sunday services at church. We both started being TAs for one of the classes the church offers which lead to us being in a small group of people once a week. It was during a TA training that Tamiara learned that Bryan has a PhD. Tamiara's friend group had been going to a trivia event on Thursdays for years. She immediately had a mutual friend invite Bryan to trivia the next week. He enjoyed it and started going pretty regularly. The same mutual friend who brought Bryan to trivia also started hosting movies that fall every other week. It was at these events that we started to talk and learn we could be sarcastic together. We quickly started to banter. But we also found that we got along really well!

In late January as we were getting ready to go to another trivia event - Bryan texted Tamiara that he was bringing a friend to trivia. This lead to texting the rest of that night and most the next day. After that, we kept finding excuses to text each other every day. It took about 1.5 weeks of texting constantly from morning to night for Bryan to ask Tamiara out. As we were leaving our small group on a Friday night - Bryan let Tamiara know “I have a question for you” as we were on the stairs. Our "lunch date" the next day turned into five hours of talking. And we haven’t stopped talking since.

Bryan was so intentional about every detail of the proposal day. He took Tamiara for a drive past where we said our first "I love you's". We went to lunch at the restaurant we had our first date. We hadn’t eaten there in person since our first date and looked back fondly on that 5 hours. We love that from our first date, conversation has flowed easily. We like each other as much as we love each other. We then went to the store and got ice cream, which was really just Bryan's excuse to go back to the house. After we put things in the freezer - we went out the front steps. As we went down the steps, he said "I have a question for you" as he got down on one knee to pop the question. Bryan picked that spot because it's the house where so much of our love has grown, and where we will start our married life and our family together. Tamiara was so surprised but also so touched as he reminded her of how much she means to him. We both teared up at different points, but Tamiara started giggling from joy and had to nod her yes once he asked the question. We got to spend the rest of our afternoon with our sweet families. They celebrated us so well and with so much love. We are thrilled to be engaged and so at peace with the knowledge that the Lord has been so faithful in getting us here today. It's been amazing to truly understand what God can do with the right person at the right time. We are so excited to see His plans for our marriage and to celebrate our wedding day with you!