The first Friday night out of Shannon's global student teaching experience in Johannesburg, South Africa, began at a bar called "Billy the Bums". Here, she noticed a handsome stud from across the bar who she could only hope had that dreamy accent the locals did. In due time, Bruce's very inebriated friend, Bryan, tried using a pick-up line on Shannon and her friend Sarah, which (given Shannon's VERY jersey attitude) you can imagine ended quite poorly. Shannon noticed Bruce, the quiet friend hoping Bryan would leave the girls alone soon, and took the opportunity to strike up a conversation with him. The four simple words "Is he your friend?" started hours of conversation about racism, American music and cultural differences (all while blaring music played in the background, of course). As Shannon and Sarah got ready to leave, Bruce asked how he could get in touch with Shannon--which resulted in an exchange of an email address. Not a day has gone by since then that the two haven't talked and the fun foreign fling they both thought was in store, turned into a story right out of the movie the Holiday.

After 3 years of long distance dating and only seeing each other every 6 months (for a month at a time, if they were lucky) they'd decided that they (and their sanity) were ready to live on the same continent. While marriage was an absolute end plan for the two, neither of them wanted marriage to be the means by which they got to give their relationship a real shot. So, Bruce had applied for the Green Card Lottery in October of 2015. Knowing there was little chance that he would get it, they began discussing plan B if the results in May of 2016 were a no go. Well, I think we all know how the rest of the story goes. Yours truly became the real-life "90-day fiance" and Brucie moved to the States on December 4, 2016. While Shannon was on her last minute bachelorette trip to New Orleans (yes, the first weekend Bruce was here) he planned a night to remember and told Shannon they were going for a special dinner when she returned. After Shannon recovered from a 3-day hangover (& that's being generous) Bruce took her to a brilliantly fancy dinner in Morristown. While Shannon suspected this might be the formal proposal Bruce refused to do via Skype, Bruce didn't seem the least bit concerned about it. He asked to go see the Christmas lights on the Morristown Green, since they'd never actually walked around them, and despite it being a school night and frigid outside, Shannon agreed. Bruce seemed more interested in taking pictures to send to his Mom than a romantic walk with Shannon, so she was just about ready to go home. And as she turned around to say just that--Bruce was down on one knee right in front of the magically lit Christmas tree. In typical Bruce fashion, after handing Shannon the wedding band, he said, "I'm gonna need that back for Saturday."

Bruce and Shannon had just celebrated their 2-year anniversary and the life they were creating was feeling like a fairy tale. Buuuut given that almost every ounce of romance was taken out of their marriage process and drowned by paperwork, fees and visas, Shannon was ready for a moment of surprise and a rock on her finger. She knew Bruce had been looking at rings (I mean pictures of her liked styles were just so often magically appearing in Bruce's messages somehow...), but she thought there might be some sort of romantic gesture for the exchange. Well, for anyone who knows Bruce, that was simply not in the books. As they were trying to get ready to head to their friend Clay and Chelsea's for the evening (and running late, of course), Bruce started acting super awkward. As Shannon was finally getting changed, Bruce walked over to her and pulled this absolutely jaw dropping ring out of his sweatpants pocket (yes, out of his sweatpants, not even in a box). Shannon was absolutely stunned and just kept repeating "OMG! I love it! I love it!". Eventually Bruce replied with, "I love YOU..." and Shannon responded with "Oh yeah! I love you too!"