We first met in college at Middle Tennessee State University through our good friends, Abbie and Stefan. Juan was friends with Stefan, and I was friends with Abbie. Though we would often hang out in the same friend group, we didn't always get along with each other. I had always thought of Juan as Stefan's annoying friend. A few years after graduating college, Juan moved from Tennessee to Colorado and we lost touch for several years. Abbie and Stefan ended up also moving to Colorado a few years after Juan, so I took a trip to visit them over a long, holiday weekend. They had invited Juan to join us at REI, which was the first time we had seen each other in years. We clicked right away this time and turns out we had more in common than we ever realized. We all ended up hanging out all day, taking a day trip down to Colorado Springs to visit Garden of the Gods. I flew back home to Nashville soon after and we didn't speak again until I visited Abbie and Stefan again a few months later. We all went on a camping trip (my first one!) that Summer and it was then that we really sparked a renewed friendship. Not only did I fall in love with Colorado on that camping trip and had decided I was going to make it my new home, but little did I realize I had actually started to fall in love with Juan too. We stayed up talking by the campfire under a sky full of stars, Juan pointing out we could see the Milky Way and reassuring me that no, a bear was not going to sneak up behind us in the dark, that it would actually most likely be a mountain lion. And if you know Juan, you aren't surprised to know that he then told me about all the different types of animal tracks, and how to identify what kind of animal is close by. After yet another short trip, I flew back to Nashville. but we stayed in constant touch, talking almost every day. A thousand miles apart, we soon realized that although we greatly valued our friendship, we wanted something more. We began very long-distance dating, both of us making a trip to see each other every holiday weekend that we could, sometimes only seeing each other 48 hours before one of us had to make the trek back home. That next Summer, a little over a year after visiting Colorado for the first time, I moved out to Denver. While leaving friends, family, and a life that I was used to was hard, it was the best decision I ever made... until after 2 and a half years of dating, on a dock overlooking Georgetown Lake, Juan asked me to marry him and I said YES. We are so excited to begin the rest of forever together, and so excited for our loved ones to be with us as we do.