I had recently moved back to Charleston from Boston. I had never tried Bumble in Charleston before. Since I had been gone for two years, I thought why don’t I give it a try now. I never in a million years thought I would find the ONE after ONE Bumble date! When I was looking at profiles on a Thursday I swiped right because Michael's first sentence in his bio was “My brother is getting married in May, let’s get the show on the road”. If anyone knows me I LOVE weddings so I wanted to swipe right. It also helped Michael was easy on the eyes. At that time I did not bother reading the rest of his bio. After a wedding weekend that kept me away rom our conversation, I picked up Bumble again and went back through Michael’s profile and took the time to read his whole bio. I saw he said “he had MS and he is confident in himself and he was looking for somebody who is confident in themself.”I had to meet this guy! He is more bold than me by mentioning his disability on his bio. I have cerebral palsy but I was never that bold to include it in mine. We decided to meet at a local wine bar called Graft. To prepare, I found him on social media and saw he knew the scene in Charleston. I had this feeling I could really like this guy. I got to Graft and I remember seeing him walk across the parking lot. I took a deep breath and knew my feeling was right. I don’t remember much of what we talked about but I do remember bringing up being back in Charleston and trying to do things that I’ve never done before living in Charleston for the past seven years. One was visiting The Angel Oak Tree as it is one of the oldest trees in America. He said that we should go sometime. He made that happen in less than a month by bringing me to his family's vacation home at Seabrook and finally seeing the Angel Oak. The whole weekend felt so natural and comfortable. I knew leaving the Angel Oak on Sunday I wanted forever with him!

Although I had started working on the ring over a month before, I had a tight window. The ring was ready on Tuesday. October 26th at noon and her parents were coming in that Thursday, October 29th for the weekend. Our anniversary was on the 27th so I thought that may be a good opportunity to propose. However, in planning, details of the night kept leaking out, mostly my own fault. As she knew more, she was really just disappointed that it wouldn't be a true surprise and was expecting it at some point that day or night. Back to the ring. My brother Patrick picked it up from the jeweler at noon, and brought it over at 5:00, under the ruse that he was going to help install some blinds in the house (which he did, thank you Patrick). Victoria wasn't home, so the transfer went off without a hitch. That night, I'm still racking my brain for how to adjust the plans for tomorrow to still be a surprise proposal. The night unfolds as a typical Tuesday night does, but with Victoria trying on outfits for our anniversary dinner. I'm cleaning up and getting ready for bed and in that moment had the realization "why don't you just do it now? It be a total surprise. " I rode into my office to get the ring and when I came back to the bedroom held it out and said "why don't you try this on too?" The surprise was legendary.