The best is yet to come!

Chris and I were set up through a mutual friend. Like every modern love story, ours started in the Instagram DMs, turned into texting, and eventually became hours-long phone calls. At the time, I had just moved to DC, and I always joke that I learned my way around the city because I’d spend hours driving around talking to Chris on the phone because if I pulled into my apartment's parking garage, I'd lose reception. I’d completely lose track of where I was! ~2 years later, Chris moved in with me and one of our favorite things was running through the city. It felt full circle running down Wisconsin Ave or through Georgetown. I'd be quickly taken back to the days I'd drive through theses streets on the phone with him, and now we're exploring together :). Back to our frist date...Before we ever met, Chris kept trying to FaceTime me, but I refused. I thought that if this was going to go anywhere, I didn’t want our first “meeting” to be through a screen. He probably thought I was catfishing him... A few weeks later, while I was at a wedding in Turks & Caicos, Chris asked me to a Ravens game. That would be our first time meeting in person. I ended up driving because he told me his car was in the shop. When I picked him up, I noticed his car sitting outside his apartment with the side mirror completely swiped off — his friend had told me he was too embarrassed to drive me with it like that. The irony? The second he got into my car, he immediately pointed out the giant dent on the side of mine from clipping a corner too tightly in my parking garage after a late night at work. We drove down to the Ravens game, and I spent most of the day basically interviewing him. I genuinely wasn’t even sure if it was a date — I thought it was just two people meeting for the first time. Then at one point, he offered me a sip of his soda from the same straw, and suddenly I thought… okay, maybe this is a date. Meanwhile, my phone was blowing up from my mom and friends asking how it was going. My mom told me, “If he’s interested, he’ll ask you to dinner after the game.” Sure enough, about 15 minutes before the game ended, Chris asked if I wanted to grab food. We somehow ended up at Applebee’s in Towson — very glamorous. After dinner, I dropped him back off at his apartment and started driving home to DC. When I didn’t hear from him right away, I convinced myself it was another classic modern-day dating situation where someone acts interested and then disappears. But before I even made it home, he called me to tell me about a song he had just wrote. The next day, he sent me a song he had written called “I’m Either Going to Love You or Hate You.” The rest, as they say, is history. Chris is a musician, and so much of the early part of our relationship lives on through songs he wrote about us. Over the last almost seven years, we’ve experienced nearly every phase of life together. We’ve lived in different cities, gone through a global pandemic, supported each other through career changes, celebrated incredible highs, and walked through some of the hardest moments imaginable. We’ve stood beside each other in sickness and in health, through uncertainty, fear, growth, and transformation. We’ve seen the absolute best and worst versions of one another — and somehow, through every season, loved each other more deeply because of it. We can't wait to share more about our relationship, our lives, our families, and our big plans once we're married. Thank you, all, for your support of us over the years. Now, let's throw one heck of a party!