We're tying the knot!!

Our relationship began on the wonderful world of Facebook Dating. We knew of each other but didn't "know" each other. Dan "liked" my profile on Facebook Dating and then didn't think I would respond back. To his surprise I swiped right on his profile and sent him a message, thanking him for the like on my profile and introducing myself. His response was not what I expected "I know exactly who you are..." and things took off from there. After talking we found that the world is REALLY small. We had a lot of mutual friends from High School. His older sister Kerrie used to cut my hair, my Mom's hair, and my brother's hair growing up. The world continued to get smaller. Our first date was July 13, 2022 at Cold Stone Creamery in Orland Park. We sat on the bench by the fountain and talked for hours reminiscing through memories of Highschool and how we had a lot of the same teachers and friends. We had gone to Richards Highschool at the same time but I was not even a blip on Dan's radar at that time. He was a Senior and I was a Freshman in '04-'05. He graduated in 2005, I didn't graduate until 2008. We continued talking and went on a few more dates to discover that his Grandfather used to work at Jack & Pat's Butcher Shop in Chicago Ridge where my first job at when I was 16. He gave me the nickname "Ruby". Dan and I both have children. Dan has two kids: Becky, 17 and Ben, 15. I have one daughter: Catherine, 9. Our absolute favorite vacation together was flying to Washington State to see our first regular season Seattle Seahawks game together in January of 2023. Dan is a HUGE Seattle Seahawks fan and explained the game of Football to me without getting mad so he won some brownie points there! Dan also loves the State of Washington in general so he showed me around some of his favorite places as well as met his distant family while we were there. We flew back to Washington for his Family Reunion in August of 2023 where Dan took me to the Pacific Ocean for the first time. That was when we both knew that that's where we wanted to be. Our proposal story is very unique. It was a Tuesday evening, Dan and I were meeting up to go to the gym. We were sitting on the couch casually talking and he says "I have something for you but it requires a "yes" or "no" answer" and I said "Okay...how can I give you the answer if I don't know what the question is?" I remember Dan laughing and then showing me the ring box "Will You Marry Me?" of course I said "YES!". He did an amazing job picking out the ring on his own and it included my love of Stitch from Disney's Lilo and Stitch.