We officially met during Eureka College's production of "August: Osage County." Early on I knew that Drew was someone I wanted to spend time with and so I tried to befriend him and made a special effort to talk to him during rehearsals. At the time he was dating one of our cast members, so I settled on creating a friendship. The run of the show came and went as did the end of our Freshman year at Eureka. I went back home to Arizona while Drew stayed in Illinois. Over the summer we stayed in touch and our friendship grew. We came back for our Sophomore year and I was determined to work up the courage to tell Drew my feelings for him now that our friendship was strong and he was single! My version of "courage" was to flirt, probably not so well, and regularly ask him if he had feelings for anyone. I was hoping these "hints" would get him to confess that he liked me, but not so much. Fast forward to February 2016, I was starting to lose hope for any possible "us" because Drew wasn't really showing interest. We were about to go to Chicago for the college's FirstGen trip and some friend's kept pushing me to just tell him my feeling's because it was Valentine's Day weekend and the worst that could happen was he would say he didn't feel the same and we would just stay friends. The 13th we all went to the Joffrey Ballet and did our annual ghost hunting adventure of the Congress Plaza Hotel. We split up late in the night, and at some point after midnight (officially Valentine's Day) Drew texted me saying "Hey, can we talk?" Lot's of texts and confessions later we decided to give dating a try because "we will never know if we don't give it a shot, and something great could come out of it." A few months later, I found out that just before the trip Drew had gotten one of those heart shaped Dove chocolates that said "Do Something Spontaneous." I am forever grateful that I was the lucky girl on the receiving end of that spontaneity because now I have the BEST forever Valentine!

From early on in our relationship we had kind of casually talked about the thought of us getting married. I believe at some point during junior year was the first time I started thinking more seriously about what our relationship meant, and what it could mean. I really liked this girl and started thinking about if I proposed, how I would. At one point, I considered what it would be like if I could surprise her in some major way, and for a while I thought about trying to propose to her at our graduation ceremony, as we walked across the stage. I briefly talked with Dr. Wright, Eureka College's President, about the idea, and she was all for it, but I quickly decided that it needed to be a more intimate setting. We also talked about what our hopes and dreams were for the future, and Stephanie was pretty set on graduating college before getting married or starting any sort of independent life together. I quickly decided that if I was going to propose to her, I wanted to do it while most of her family was around, since we weren't able to see each other much after we both went home. I decided to ask her right after graduation, with all of our family and friend's around, which is exactly what happened. After the graduation ceremony, we went to take photos with our families at the Eureka College sign. After a few pictures we got some with just the two of us. She refused to take her cap off because she "didn't want the line from her cap in the photos." When she wasn't looking, I knelt down and asked "Now that you have your degree, will you take my last name?" The rest is history... in the making.