In light of COVID-19, we wanted to check in and let you know your health and safety are our top priority. At this time, we are still planning to move forward with our wedding as originally scheduled. Thank you for your prayers and patience during these unknown times!

Jackson and I met towards the end of our first semester at Mississippi State as freshman. I was set up on a blind date for a fraternity formal and the guy I went with happened to be friends with Jackson. We started to become friends at the beginning of the following semester and our friendship continued to grow. Jackson was in the friend zone for a while, but by our junior year I was beginning to like him too. However, we weren't able to realize that we were on the same page about wanting to be more than friends until the end of our fall semester senior year (so three years of friendship foundation!). We started dating on December 7th after he made me dinner before going on Winter Break our senior year. We celebrated our 2 year anniversary on December 7th and almost 5 years of knowing each other and being friends!

Getting engaged on my birthday was the perfect cover for Jackson to get me dressed up and fancy. Jackson and I had been talking about getting married for a while honestly, we both knew pretty early on in finally dating each other that this was it and we wanted to be together. Both of us will be graduating with our Master's Degrees this May and Jackson had me convinced that he hadn't saved enough money so no engagement would happen until then (honestly I bought his story some of the time, but was expecting more around our anniversary). For my birthday, he said he had this whole evening planned out starting with dinner but wouldn't tell me what else we were going to do. We went to dinner at the Veranda (a nice restaurant in Starkville) and then after dinner he said we were going to go watch the sunset at the Refuge (which is a National Wildlife Refuge that is beautiful. It has a lake and lots of trees and several overlooks to watch the sunset). While driving there I kind of thought it was coming, but also didn't want to get my hopes up. Once we parked the car, we walked over to an overlook that him and I have often gone to throughout our relationship. Once we climbed the stairs there was a bible on the ledge with a little bump in it (i.e. ring tied to the bookmark). He read me Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 first, which is a verse both him and I have always grown up loving and established early on that we wanted it to be a part of our relationship. He then turned to Song of Solomon 4:9 and read that verse and that's where the ring was tied on the bookmark. He finished reading and then got down on one knee! Easiest decision of yes I've ever made!