We’re getting married!

We met while attending Franklin High School, and got to know each other in English class. We read Romeo & Juliet, and I was ready for the test, however Melissa asked me if she could copy off my test. Normally, I’m a stickler for the rules and would have said no, but I allowed it because she was a cute girl. I got an 89% while Melissa failed horribly with an undisclosed grade. I wanted to teach Melissa more about love and asked Melissa to junior year homecoming. A week later, I took her to scenic Copernicus Park on Milwaukee’s south side and asked her out, filled with fright and shaking with nerves.

In June 2019, we took a weekend trip to Door County, Wisconsin to check out the local wineries and various hiking paths and lighthouses that Door County is famous for. I placed a reservation at a nice restaurant, and told Melissa to look really nice, but instead of going right to the restaurant, I had some paint and paintbrushes stuffed away in the trunk of my car, and took her to the famous Anderson Warehouse. The Anderson Warehouse lies on a dock in the town of Ephraim, and was built in 1858. Over the years, boaters would paint their respective vessel's name on the Warehouse's clapboard siding, and eventually, residents, visitors and artists alike would paint and leave a message on the side of the warehouse. For our 3-year anniversary together, Melissa gifted me a metal card stamped with a message on it to place in my wallet. The message read, “If you asked me to love you extra today, I’d love you extra forever”. I told Melissa that I wanted to paint that phrase on the siding of the warehouse, but since there’s not a lot of room, we’d have to abbreviate the saying to an acronym of the first letter of each word of the phrase. This would make it read, IYAMTLYET (If you asked me to love you extra today), ILYEF (I’d love you extra forever. I had Melissa paint the first half of the phrase, and then for the second half of the phrase, I changed it up and painted IAYTLMEF, which instead of spelling out “I’d love you extra forever,” spells out, “I’d ask you to love me extra forever”. After Melissa realized that I “was messing up the letters”, I spelled it out for her, and got down on a knee to ask her to marry me. Many thanks go out to Luke Collins Photography, a local Door County photographer, who I had take candid engagement photos of us there on the dock before, during, and after the engagement.