I (McKayla) moved to Springfield in 2019 to start my career at Memorial on the Mother & Baby unit. I quickly found a church family and regularly sat behind Dario’s family (The Henrys). Fast forward to March 2020 I was taking the Henrys a meal after they welcomed their 4th babe (we have been friends ever since). Dario was walked across the living room in a red hoodie with his hair up in a bun and totally caught my eye. Thanks to the pandemic, Dario was taking online classes at the University of Nebraska Lincoln (maybe one day he will bleed orange and blue) and was making frequent visits to Illinois to see his growing family. For most of those visits we didn’t talk at all—in fact I was convinced Dario was annoyed that his family kept inviting me over when he was visiting. (I think there is a high chance the Henrys were playing match maker!) One of those visits lead to conversation, card games, and lots of laughter. There came a point where I just wanted to get to know him even though he was still in Nebraska. What is a girl to do? This girl used his sweet, sassy niece’s birthday to my advantage. After being at all the other kids’ birthday parties, it was odd he wasn’t at Kami’s one year birthday. I took the opportunity to slide into his DMs with a video of us all singing to her. I love that her birthday is also my friend-adversary with his family! After a few months of texting, FaceTime, and watch parties to get to know each other, we finally found ourselves in August of 2021. Dario moved to Springfield and shortly after accompanied me to my cousins wedding… where I abandoned him for the dance floor (he had ample opportunity to join me--he avoids the dance floor like the plague) and left him to meet ALL of the Schneiders on his own. I knew he was a keeper after he survived the wedding and everybody told me that they LOVED him! We finally started dating in September of 2021. Since then we have gone on some dates, asked literally hundreds of questions (one of our favorite things to pass time), had some arguments (one of which I decided he’s the one I want to argue with for the rest of my life), said “I love you," and then I said “YES” when he asked me to marry him! Now we are getting married and cannot wait to celebrate with each of you as we start our lives as husband and wife!