We met online on the dating site OkCupid. I was nearing the end of my clinical rotations for pharmacy school and thought it would be fun to try and meet someone. Andrew had been living the bachelor lifestyle at his bungalow in Broad Ripple (ironically across the street from where my friend Maggie was living at the time and I would sometimes go there to not study). Andrew looked at Ali's profile and sent her a message. I don't remember much about the message except that it actually had conversation fodder instead of just "hi" and that the last line of it said "I have a cat, his name is Domino. Do you have any pets?" So we started chatting. We decided to meet for dinner in early December in Broad Ripple. Our first date was at Flatwater and when I walked up to Andrew he gave me a hug. We had good conversation, food, and drinks. After dinner we decided to go to Lava Lounge for hookah. One of our other early dates was cooking dinner together, something that has continued and improved over the last 6 years!

In 2016 we decided to stay in Indy and bought a house in the Meridian-Kessler neighborhood. We love hanging out in our sunroom and backyard, cooking together, Indian takeout, walking in to Broad Ripple / SoBro for food and drinks, biking in the neighborhood and on the Monon, binging Netflix shows together (but somehow never finishing the series), and taking weekend trips!

We went on our first long trip together a few years ago to Mexico. We immediately were impressed with Cabo and ultimately decided that whenever we got married we would have our wedding there. Now here we are--so excited to celebrate with everyone in one of our favorite places!

Hashtag: To be determined

So my original plan was to propose when we took our vacation to Cabo this April but because of Covid we had to reschedule the trip for the fall. I decided to do it on Memorial Day weekend, right before Ali’s bday.

My mom Julie and stepdad Jerry just bought a fixer-upper in Brown County that we’ve been going down to help with and hang out. That weekend we had plans to go down there for yard work with J and J, my brother Mike and his girlfriend Julia, plus my brother Matt and sister-in-law Clara were up from TN and I had invited a couple of our friends to come for a cookout that day at the property. I wanted to make sure that some intimate friends and family could be there. It was a hot and sunny day and by mid afternoon we were all exhausted and overheated. We had a cookout to cap off the day and had migrated to hanging out near the fire pit and everyone was together talking. I knew I needed to do it before it got dark since our friend Keaton had brought his new camera to get pics--he was the only one I told about the plan to propose before that day.

I stood up to the group and asked if I could have everyone's attention, then went over to Ali and got down on one knee and proposed. To my relief she said yes! :)