We’re getting married!

Two months before I graduated from The University of Texas, I was scrambling to get my life (and thesis) together like the procrastinator I am. My roommates were going out to meet up with some of our friends at Cain and Abel’s before heading to a house party and I decided that would be the perfect opportunity to stay in a quiet apartment and finally bang out those 25 pages of writing I’d been neglecting. Around midnight I decided to take a break and meet up with my friends; for just an hour, I swore. When I got there, I sat in the middle of everyone and across from a boy with very “well-endowed” eyebrows - Wesley. I definitely wasn’t the nicest about his eyebrows, but I was very intrigued by our new acquaintance, a sophomore in the fraternity our friends were a part of. Well, so much for an hour-long break. We all went to a house party after that and I spent the entire night with Wesley. The next morning my mom came into town for a mother-daughter weekend and I spent the entire weekend wondering when I would see him next but swearing at the same time, I wasn’t going to get serious with anyone before graduating and going off to save the world. Well that didn’t last long. We spent almost every minute of my last two months at school together, or texting when we weren’t together. Still I resisted the inevitable, until Wes annoyingly saved my life. The day before my thesis defense we were in the library together – Wesley studying for finals and me putting the final touches on my biggest college project yet – but really, we were watching 127 hours, because duh. I wasn’t feeling very well, but I swore it was heart burn or something. I left in the afternoon to go pick up the kids that I nannied for and could barely drive – it hurt so badly to move the left side of my body. Wesley tried to get me to go to the doctor’s, but I stubbornly (anyone surprised here?) refused because school came first, and my thesis defense was tomorrow.

In the late afternoon, Wesley finally convinced me to let him take me to the student clinic just to get some medicine so I could get through tomorrow. When I came out of my apartment and got into his Scion XBOX (you know the one), he locked me in. I screamed very not nice things at him and called my dad screaming that some strange boy just locked me in the car and was taking me to the emergency room. I’m pretty sure my dad laughed and said, “well do you need to go to the emergency room?” So, we went to the emergency room. I screamed at Wesley to leave. He obviously didn’t. They took me into surgery for appendicitis. I screamed at Wesley to leave. He obviously didn’t. I came out a million years later and was taken into my room where my mom had arrived from Houston and literally the first thing I said was “Wesley is here, do I look ok?” Dumb question Lorri, you’ve been in the hospital and through surgery, of course, you don’t look ok. My mom smiled and said “yes.” Honestly, from that point forward, I knew what we had was not a short fling and that we would be together forever. We’ve definitely had our share of hard times – family tragedy, long-distance, grad school, new jobs – but we’ve always been there for each other and I couldn’t imagine anyone I’d rather go through any of it with. Wesley has been my best friend since the Spring of 2012, and I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with him.

I had been brainstorming ideas for a while as to how I wanted to propose to Lorri (the front-runner being a trip back to Austin to do it in the city where we met) but to this point, we had no trip on the calendar and I didn’t want to force a trip back there for fear she would immediately pick up on what was to come. In October 2018, we were looking at flights to Europe (as we often did in our free time) to go somewhere for a few days over MLK weekend in January. Next thing we know, we have a five-day trip booked for Paris, France in early January. Immediately, I knew that this would be the perfect place for it to finally happen. Travel had become a huge part of our relationship and what better way to ask the girl of my dreams to marry me than on a trip to Paris. Soon after that, I bought the ring and started coming up with ideas as to how I wanted the proposal to happen. After a lot of research, I found a photographer named Julien and started talking to him about when and where this was going to happen. We had a few tours already planned over the course of our trip but Sunday, January 20, 2019 was wide open. Julien recommended the Bir-Hakiem as it was a beautiful bridge with a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower without the crowds. Now the tricky part – how was I going to get Lorri to the bridge on Sunday morning? Thankfully, Julien had the perfect advice. The bridge was in a prominent scene in the movie Inception, and with that being one of my favorite movies, I knew Lorri wouldn’t even bat an eye if I wanted to take a longer route to quickly see the bridge. Little did she know, this bridge would hold a special place in our hearts for the rest of our lives.

Sunday morning comes around, and the first thing I noticed was the fog and clouds out of our Airbnb window. Although I knew it would still be special, I wanted to make sure the proposal pictures were still able to capture the Paris scenery. Without being too obvious, I knew I had to stall to give the clouds and fog enough time to clear, and immediately texted Julien to make sure we could wait a little on the proposal. After a long breakfast, the weather was turning up and we made our way towards the Eiffel Tower. As we approached the bridge that Lorri assumed we were taking across the River Seine on our way to the Arc de Triomphe, I dropped the “Inception” line and without hesitation, she caved. My heart started racing, as it all fell into place. Lorri still had no idea. As we approached the meeting spot on the bridge, I made eye contact with Julien to let him know we were ready to go. At this point, with so much emotion running through both of us, it’s very fuzzy as to what was said, BUT I’m positive that Lorri said yes! After soaking in the moment and getting a few pictures of our own, Julien gave us a magical mini photoshoot to kick off our engagement. A full day of exploring Paris (including the Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Couer Cathedral, and a riverboat dinner cruise) hadn’t even started, but it was already the best day of my life.