Take it back about 13 years sitting in high school public speaking class - This is where we met and our story begins from there…

Clinton had a crush on me from the beginning. And let me tell you… he never stopped asking if he could take me on a date. My answer was continually, “No! I don’t want to ruin our friendship”. After high-school, we lost touch. A few years later, we reconnected when randomly running into each other at Missouri State University. Huge surprise as neither of us knew we were both attending the same university. That led to our college days of hanging out together. Clinton still wanted to date me but I still had it in my mind to say no…but after a few times of hanging out, I had changed my mind. I thought I was giving all the signals that maybe I was ready to give us a shot. Clinton didn’t pick up on any of them. (I know now that’s because he is NOT good at that!) We finished college and he moved back to Poplar Bluff while I stayed in Springfield. We texted almost every single day from there on until the day that he just stopped texting me altogether. I let it go for a while because that sometimes happened if one of us got into a relationship but we would eventually text back something. He didn’t - it had been about a year that I hadn’t heard from Clinton. Fast forward to January 2022 - I couldn’t take not knowing anymore and decided I would message Cabrina (his mom) on Facebook to make sure he was ok even though I knew that made me seem like a total creeper. But goodness, I’m so glad I did. He responded and gave me his new number. This started us texting every day again. And you guessed it!! He asked me to go on a date again. I agreed to go to dinner as friends. BUT LET ME TELL YOU - as soon as I got in his truck that evening I instantly felt so nervous around him and that threw me off. I’d never felt that way around him before. (He likes that part of the story of course because it meant that my feelings for him were there.) That night, he got me to say it could count as a real date and from there on we were inseparable. Clinton asked me to be his girlfriend one month after that date.

To preface: We had a Nashville trip planned for the following week. Clinton and I had talked about marriage many times at this point and I had in my mind that he might propose on our trip or on my birthday which was the next month. He caught me SO off guard and completely surprised me! A sweet proposal at home with just the two of us. He walked into the room with a tray. On it was a cake that had stick figures proposing, the ring box, and a shirt that said “yes”. He was wearing his shirt that said “will you marry me”. He set the tray down, got on his knee and asked me to marry him. My mouth dropped open and I just stared at him for a good minute because I was NOT expecting it. I think I made him sweat a little from the long pause but of course my answer was YES!! Little did I know, all of those years he was right all along. We were meant to be together and we can’t wait to share our wedding day with you! All of our favorite people. 🩷