We're getting married!

Every great love story starts somewhere. Ours just happens to start at 3 A.M. on a street corner in Westport, Kansas City — with two slices of pizza and one very questionable life choice. It was one of those nights where the air buzzes with laughter, music spills out of the bars, and everyone’s stumbling toward late-night food like moths to a flame. I was out with my friend Jen, and after hours of drinking, I made a beeline for Joe’s Pizza — because if you know, you know. Now, when I’m drunk, there is absolutely no convincing me that I don’t need two slices of pizza. I never eat the second one. Never have, never will. But the line is so long, and the logic in my slightly tipsy brain is simple: if I get hungry again and didn’t order it, I’ll be drunk, mad, and starving — and that’s just not the vibe. So, there I was, holding the forgotten slice, waiting for my Uber. That’s when I heard it. “Hey! HEYYYYY!” Now, anyone familiar with Westport at 3 A.M. knows that yelling in the dark isn’t always good news. So naturally, I did what any self-respecting woman would do — I prepared for my dramatic end. When I looked up, though, it wasn’t danger calling my name. It was a handsome guy across the street waving like his life depended on it. “Can I have a bite of your pizza?” he yelled. And that was Taylor. I blinked, half laughing, half confused, and shouted back, “You can have the whole slice!” because, let’s be honest, I wasn’t going to eat it anyway. Then, in true main-character fashion, he jogged across the street — and out of nowhere, produced a milk crate. To this day, no one knows where that milk crate came from. It wasn’t on his side of the street. It wasn’t on mine. It just… appeared. Like some divine intervention of the pizza gods. He plopped it down, sat on it like he owned the place, snagged the slice out of my hand, and with a grin said, “So, how’s y’all ladies’ night going?” That was the beginning. We stood there for a while, chatting and laughing. After maybe 4 minutes, Taylor invited Jen and me to join him and his friends at an after-party. And because sound judgment is not always the priority at 3 A.M., we said, “Sure!” and climbed into an Uber with men we didn’t know, headed to a destination we didn’t ask about. I always say I had two options that night: I was either meeting a serial killer or I was meeting my husband. Thankfully, it was the latter. From Taylor’s side, it’s almost crazier. He had been out with one group of friends earlier that night, and they were ready to call it quits. But Taylor wasn’t done partying yet (shocker), so he turned around to head back into Westport. On his way back, he ran into an old group of friends from high school who just happened to be going to said after-party. So he tagged along, walked a route he wasn’t even supposed to be on, and ended up on that corner — right where I was standing with my extra slice of pizza. In other words, if he’d gone home like he planned, or if I hadn’t decided to beg for my unnecessary second slice, our paths never would’ve crossed. But they did. And that random night — filled with chaos, laughter, and a mysterious milk crate — turned into the best thing that ever happened to us. From that moment on, life got brighter, funnier, and a lot more full. What started as a late-night encounter became weekend adventures, inside jokes, a house full of dogs, and a love that’s as real as it is ridiculous. Every now and then, we still laugh about that night — how fate doesn’t always look elegant or planned. Sometimes, it’s loud, a little drunk, and messy. And now, years later, we’re saying I do in the very city where it all began — Kansas City, the place that gave us our love story, our life together, and a reminder that sometimes the best things happen when you least expect them.