Evan first saw Alexis on north campus at Northwestern and grew a crush from afar. Alexis was first officially introduced to Evan by a mutual friend (shoutout Ariel) at a Northwestern football pregame when Alexis was a freshman and Evan was a sophomore. That same year, that same friend set them up on a “blind date” for a boat party she organized. Long story short, Evan was a little shy on the date. Fast forward through the rest of our college years, they both lived their independent lives and had some little interactions here and there. Evan graduated and began working at Aldi and the year after, Alexis did the same. This is when things started to heat up! Aldi has a long and grueling training program that requires one of the District Managers to work closely with the trainee throughout the process. The stars aligned and the directors assigned Evan to be Alexis’s trainer. The very first day that Evan came to the store to begin training, Alexis instantly got butterflies. He smelled so effing good and looked so damn good in a suit and was such a gentleMAN. The training led to lots of time spent together and made both of their crushes amplify. There was just one little problem…. Aldi had a strict no-dating policy and they would be at risk of being fired if they entered into a relationship. That didn’t stop Alexis! She persistently invited Ev over to hang out after work. At first, he’d give excuses for why he couldn’t but she knew he wanted to and was just being timid…so she persisted. They eventually began hanging out regularly, while keeping it a secret from Aldi coworkers so they could protect their jobs. They very quickly fell full blown in lurvvvv. Fast all the way forward to now, they have both since said #bye to Aldi, bought a condo together, own two furry children (@payton.and.camila), have been together for 5+ years, and love life together.

To preface the story, I’ll say I was very confident that Evan wasn’t going to propose until much later or next year for a number of reasons; we just bought a condo, we’ve had a lot of life changes, I didn’t even know my own ring size, etc. In March, on my birthday, Ev told me he had a 2nd surprise planned for me in a few months. The day finally came and I was still oblivious to what was going down. Ev said he had a day of fun activities planned for us and I thought that was so sweet and exciting (still wasn’t suspicious because Ev does sweet things all the time!). As we were driving to our destination, I realized we were headed to Northwestern. He told me he was taking me to Al’s, this little sandwich place I LOVE that's only open 4 hours a day so we never are able to make time for it. But first, Ev said he wanted to see something new on campus (again, I thought nothing of this because he liked looking at buildings & stuff and it felt very normal for him). As we were walking, he suddenly stopped me, and for a quick sec I thought he might be proposing, but then I convinced myself that was impossible and assumed he was just making a sweet moment. He started to tell me that right where we were standing was the first place that he saw me on campus. THEN HE GOT DOWN ON ONE KNEE AND I LOST IT. I was waterfall crying and could not believe it was happening. It was so unexpected and I was overwhelmed with happiness. He cried, I cried, we all cried, and he proposed. After, I of course wanted to tell everyone I loved, but Ev suggested we grab a drink together first, which sounded perfect to me. We went to one of our favorite bars in Andersonville, and to my surprise, our families & friends were waiting there to celebrate with us! I waterfall cried again and can confidently say it was one of the best days of my life. (Also, major shoutout to Cara, Evan’s sister, for stealthily hiding behind a tree under a blanket with a camera to capture the proposal moment like a true ninja.)