Tripp and I met on Hinge, an online dating app, that connects people with mutual Facebook friends. Although we both went to Middlebury College, we never overlapped. I was Class of '04; Tripp was Class of '09. So, how did we meet? In one of the many miracles that it took to bring us together, a friend from my rowing team (Camden) married a friend from Tripp's swim team (Rob). The other couple started dating right before they left college, at the end of Tripp's freshman year. It's possible we might have met in other ways, but it sure helped that we both knew Camden Hillas. Sometime before Thanksgiving of 2015, we both signed up for Hinge. Tripp stood out as a fellow Midd grad with an adventurous spirit. Our first date was at the Chapel Hill bar Milltown, where we both sipped on the seasonal winter beer from Mother Earth brewing. The beer was tasty, and so was the conversation. We've been hanging out ever since.

I wanted to propose somewhere that had meaning for Lauren, and maybe somewhere we could go back to afterwards. After thinking about it for a while, I figured her Grandmother's farm in Chapel Hill would probably be the best spot. I got a lot of help from our families in the planning and execution. We went out to the farm one Saturday afternoon and eventually went for a walk around the pond, where I/we played bagpipes for a little bit. When I put the pipes back in the bag, I grabbed the ring from bagpipe case. We enjoyed a few moments by the pond, then headed back up to her Grandmother's house, where her parents had flown in and my parents had driven over to surprise her. Her parents had organized a wonderful dinner at Fearrington, where the rest of our immediate families (aunts, uncles, grandmothers) showed up to surprise Lauren as well.