Our story is my favorite to tell because the Lord has been so instrumental in every piece of it and there's no denying His authorship in our relationship. Tyler and I met February 2011 as freshmen in college when we were placed as leaders on a Young Life team together. Honestly there was no “spark” upon first meeting each other (on either side-it’s fine, we’ve talked about it) but over the next four years we quickly realized there was an undeniable chemistry between us that made us such incredible friends. Sometime between our last two years of college Tyler and I developed feelings for one another. We kept them very quiet, hardly admitting to ourselves let alone to each other or anyone else. Little did we know we would be living on different continents for the next 2 years before either of us would have the opportunity to share our feelings with the other. Tyler called to ask me on a date after we crossed paths at a wedding shortly after I arrived back in America 2 years after we graduated. At this point he was very direct with his intentions as he offered to fly to Virginia from Nashville just to take me on a date. Coincidentally, despite Tyler already living there I already had a trip lined up to visit the city, as Nashville was a city on my heart as somewhere I wanted to move to in the near future. We went on our first date while I was on my “vision trip” to Nashville and then Tyler and I dated long distance for about 4 months before I moved to Nashville, as the timing ended up working out so perfectly! We’ve lived a large part of our friendship in different seasons completely unaware of whether or not our paths would cross again but the Lord has been faithful through it all. He grew us into more of who He created us to be individually in those seasons while we were blissfully unaware of what He was weaving behind the scenes to reveal to us 8 years later. Tyler is truly such a gift to me and I cannot wait to celebrate him for the rest of my life as his wife!

Took me long enough - 7.5 years of friendship breaks down like this: four years of college, two years apart, a year and a half of dating, one month of planning, and a partridge in a pear tree. This was it, and I couldn’t believe it! One slight problem, the illness that I had the week leading up to this day, left me with no voice. Yikes - I didn't know how I could pull this off. Sitting at my kitchen table the morning of January 27th, I could do nothing, but marvel in the Lord’s story that he had written. Everything that I had waited for and petitioned to the Lord was finally coming to fruition. What a picture of his grace. I told her, “I’ll be at your house at 9am, we’re leaving at 9am. We really needed to leave at 9:30am, but knowing my beautiful fiance-to-be all too well, I thought I’d give her a bit of padding timewise… Let’s just say I was right to do that. Oh, did I mention, she was/still is to this day so beautiful! When we got to Bicentennial Park, the calm, cool, and collected me turned into a very nervous me. But a good nervousness, like bottom of the 9th inning, runner on second base, two out kind of nervousness. After she acknowledged that this was the spot that I took her on our first date, we proceeded to embrace in a hug. As we pulled away to continue our conversation, she saw my eyes fogging up. Whether or not she had any suspicion beforehand, at that moment, she knew. I have seriously no clue what I said other than, “Allison, will you marry me?” She said yes! We had about 30 seconds of time spent with each other before 95 bells in the pillars that surrounded us started to ring -- a little surprise. It was dare I say, magical. There's more to the bells. Ask next time you see us. 😎 I mean this with all of my heart. What an incredible, indescribable, next-level, joy-filled, love driven, sweet, from-the-Lord moment that was. It's a story that I will always find joy in sharing. What an incredible gift. 1 John 4:7-21 -- I love you, Allison!