With me in Kearney and Colten in Aurora, our friendship stayed strong. I would come home on weekends and we would get together to hang out. Over Thanksgiving break in 2019, we decided to have a Star Wars movie marathon with some friends. We still aren't sure how but after that night we just decided to change our status from "bestfriends" to "dating." From that moment on we have been each others rocks with everything that we do.

The distance was a little weird at first, but we soon got into routine of FaceTiming every night to tell the other about our day. School ended in-person classes in early March due to COVID, so I came home. We continued to strengthen and grow in our relationship with each other as well as our relationship with God.

Around month 3 of dating, we nonchalantly agreed that we wanted to relationship to continue and eventually lead to marriage instead of becoming a waste of time. After that conversation, we continued on as normal in our relationship until the beginning of this year.

Around January, we started getting serious about the whole marriage idea. We would look at engagement rings, talk about what kind of dress I would have, what our colors would be, just all the normal wedding planning you do once you're engaged. I would jokingly pester Colten and ask when I was going to get that ring that symbolizes our forever. I'm sure he got plenty annoyed with my pestering because he was just trying to make it through the rest of senior year.

Registry