Rewind to 9th grade English class when we were paired as editing partners. It was 1st period and anyone who knows us can guess how well it went. I was bursting with energy, happy to learn, and eager to work hard. Kyle was excited to sleep. I made a bunch of comments on his work; he returned mine virtually unedited and said "looks good" even when it didn't. It was an uneventful year and even though we spent the better part of 10 months working together, neither of us knew anything about one another, nor did we really bother to pay much attention to each other. An exciting start to the relationship, I know.

Fast forward a little bit to the summer of 2009, just a week before we started 10th grade. Conversations at a party peaked my interest and inspired me to reach out to Nicole (our mutual friend, and now, one of my bridesmaids) to ask her to set us up. One west meadow date, a bunch of messed up bones and ligaments, and seven screws in my ankle later, we were dating. Though it was probably guilt and pity that initially drew Kyle in, it wasn't long before I charmed him and he was locked in.

Like most other significant days in our life (see first date story), this one didn't exactly go according to plan either. Yet, it was perfect. On the second full day of our Canadian Rockies roadtrip we headed to Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park. With the ring tucked away in his hiking backpack he laid the perfect plan to propose in view of an isolated island in the middle of the lake that I had seen and swooned over on every Instagram travel page that I follow. Well, after 8 miles of hiking, and after saying 50 times that "it's got to be just around this bend", we learned that the island was actually about 25 miles away...and only accessible by boat. So, after our failed expedition to what we now refer to as "bullshit island" we begrudgingly walked back to the parking lot, ate (we wandered around for 8 miles, we were starving), and hiked back to the lake for one final view before heading home. As you probably could have guessed, it was here, on the edge of the most beautiful lake that either of us has ever seen, that he asked. I would write the cliche "it was here that I said yes", but I was too busy crying (as you also probably could have guessed) to actually say anything.