Rene met Arielle in Florida Christian School seven years ago, Rene was a senior and Arielle was a junior. Luckily for Rene, Arielle was in his math class which gave him a whole year to build up enough confidence to simply speak to her, much less ask her out. Coming up with the cleverest thing he could, Rene finally made his move in January of 2017 when he asked Arielle if the girl sitting next to her was her sister (Amber, who Rene already knew was her sister). Arielle answered in the affirmative, and Rene quickly retreated to his seat treating the conversation as a success. These awkward “conversations” continued through much of following weeks, typically consisting of Rene cornering Arielle by her locker and chasing her down in the hallways. Much to Rene’s amazement, this strategy of asking Arielle mundane questions somehow worked.

Arielle began taking an interest in Rene and began engaging him in conversation via text. For reasons unknown to her, Rene never really said much to her in person at school beyond simple hellos and smiles as they walked by each other. The truth being that once Rene realized she was getting interested, he became unfathomably nervous when she would try to talk to him in front of others. This almost cost Rene deeply when out of sheer nervousness he walked right past her on his senior night game of lacrosse as he was too nervous to talk to her in front of his teammates (who were not even remotely paying attention to Rene). Luckily, Arielle gave Rene another chance and he finally asked her out on a date, Arielle would then stand Rene up for a last-minute trip to New York. However, Arielle then invited Rene out to a friend’s birthday party where he thought he was getting stood up again because she was twenty minutes late. Finally, on May 6, 2017, Rene finally asked Arielle to be his girlfriend (he actually just took the liberty of introducing her as his girlfriend and never really asked).

Four years later in December of 2021, Rene and Arielle were planning a trip to visit a friend (Tyler) who lived just outside of Atlanta. Rene and his friend spent the weeks leading up to the trip planning the best spot for Rene to propose to Arielle. Finally, deciding on a restaurant that was at the top of Ponce City Market overlooking the Atlanta skyline; it was going to be perfect. Rene then nervously flew to Atlanta with a ring box sized hole burning in his bag, while also trying to act like everything was normal as to not alert Arielle. However, the perfect plan failed when they arrived at Ponce City market and the top deck was closed due to weather. Fortunately, Rene and Tyler had planned for such an occurrence and quickly switched to plan B. After a quick bird scooter ride to Piedmont Park, Rene gave Tyler the signal to start recording, he got down on one knee in a remote area of the park where the skyline crept out of the tree line, and he asked Arielle to marry him, and she said YES!

Written by yours truly,

Rene A. Diaz