We’re getting married!!

We met through some crazy mutual friends. The story begins on Friday morning, McKenna, Aliya, and our mutual friends decided they wanted to go to a place called Top Golf. Aliya, McKenna's sister, decided she didn't want to go and that left McKenna to be a third wheel. Our mutual friends decided to invite me to join them thinking we'd get together, basically trying to play the role of match makers. Both McKenna and I weren't interested in dating at the time and we were focusing on growing our relationship with God, but here we are now! Hesitantly McKenna and I agreed to meet with each other. The mutual friends decided for us that I would be picking up McKenna at 6pm, we didn't know each other mind you so this seemed a bit risky. Knowing McKenna would be uncomfortable, I called her asking if this was something she'd want to do. After some easy agreeing we met up, and I remember seeing McKenna for the first time, being taken back and completely out of breath! I also remember McKenna asking, before we even got outside of her neighborhood, "wait, are you a liberal?" From that day forward I knew I’d found the one! After a 45 minute drive and every conversation you could think of McKenna and I met up with our mutual friends and we had a fun night playing golf, driving around, and eating food!

Michael, being the amazing man that he is, wanted to do something different for our proposal! He had an idea to make it special, a memory to last a lifetime. The Saturday before Michael proposed he planned a surprise date. I was very nosey and constantly trying to figure out what this surprise date was. When the night finally he drove us to a local jewelry store. Before we went inside he pulled out three rings and placed them in my hand and then explained what we were going to do. He had reseved a private workshop where we were going to use the rings to make our wedding bands. This had to be one of the sweetest ideas I had ever heard, but he made it even better when he told me where the rings came from. Two rings came from his side of the family and one from my side, all three were being passed down to us! This made it all the more special. We walked into the shop where we then melted down the gold, shaped the ingot, measured and cut the bands. Next we sauntered and finally sized and polished the bands. Afterward, Michael explained to me that our jeweler would be taking my band to set a diamond, so it was going to be a while before he proposed. The next week, Michael had planned another date! Thinking he was going to propose I was very excited, but he assured me that my ring was still being worked on. That night Michael picked me up in a 1979 Chevy Malibu and drove us to the waterfront park in Lake Oswego where he first asked me to be his girlfriend. After a short walk reminiscing through the park, he took me down to a creek where he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes! After our special moment, he turned me around to see his friend pop out of the bushes with a camera. After getting pictures and videos, Michael said he had two more surprises for me. He told me he planned a dinner with our families to celebrate the engagement and the second surprise was going to have to wait. Once we arrived at the restaurant I saw my two best friends sitting with our family. Mike had managed to fly them back to Oregon to celebrate with us! I was in complete awe of the lengths Michael took to make every moment so incredibly special. After dinner, we ended the night with laughter and ice cream. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better night!