-We moved the location of the reception! It will now be under a tent on St. Mary's grounds. -We encourage you to use your own best judgement regarding Covid-19 precautions

As Hillsdale played a huge role in both our formations it made perfect sense that we would get engaged somewhere in the town. The first time we spent time alone together was in the summer of 2018. We had first gone kayaking on Lake Bawbees and throughout the rest of that summer we consistently went on walks at Bawbees. So choosing that as the actual location of the engagement was pretty easy. Last September, I came up with some excuse so that Lillian and I could get back to Hillsdale from Wisconsin. I had planned on a nice relaxing day with the family and then we would go out to Bawbees at sunset and I would propose and it would be all romantic and such….shortly before we left for Michigan I learned that the very same weekend was Homecoming for Hillsdale College! I didn’t want a bunch of Homecoming partiers to crash our evening engagement so I decided to do it early in the morning instead. Not very subtle, since we don’t go on early morning walks often, so Lillian definitely suspected something was up. That Saturday morning we drove out to Lake Bawbees shortly after sunrise and walked around the parks for a while. We arrived at a little peninsula and stood there watching the mist on the lake. Just as I was about to take a knee, we heard a shrill whine from around a bend in the lake. I paused, and then a parade of 7 fishing boats came motoring around the bend of the lake and right past our peninsula. You can imagine my frustration. It is a comical image and memory now, but at the time the 30 seconds it took them to go past felt like hours. Once they were out of sight I took a knee, proposed and Lilly said yes!