We (Nate and Beth!) met on a dating app at the end of 2020. Right before we connected Beth was very close to giving up on dating apps altogether! Then she matched with a cute and fun-looking redhead and thought she would give it one more chance. It was the chance that changed her whole life!

After we connected, Nate saw that Beth had been to Senegal in her dating profile and so he sent her a message telling her that his dad had been there on a mission trip, which gave him major brownie points in Beth's book for being familiar with Senegal! However, when they first started talking, Nate got scared that Beth actually didn't live in Boston, as she was visiting her parents in South Dakota for the Christmas holidays. For a moment he thought our connection was too good to be true, until Beth reassured him that she would indeed be coming back to Boston in a few weeks.

Beth knew Nate was special when he was patient enough to wait to go on a date with her until after she got back. Then she knew he was even more special when he talked on the phone with her for a large part of her drive from Sioux Falls to Boston! Everything came together when we finally had our first date, after several weeks of video calls and text messages, and both Beth and Nate felt very at ease with each other. As Beth's mom would say, it was like putting on an old shoe!

After that, the adventures would begin! From hiking in the snow, to drives down Cape Cod, to cruises with friends, to road trips to Nashville, to bachelor-watching nights with Nate's parents, life together always seemed better than life apart.

Both of us love the idea of storybook love, but at the end of the day we love each other for all of the very real imperfections each of us has. In the Summer of 2022 Nate and Beth almost broke up due to old skeletons in both of their closets. Beth left Boston for a month or so and spent time with her parents before ultimately realizing that she loved Nate more than he could ever hurt her, and he felt the same way. We always hurt the people we love, but through God's example of love we can mend each other's wounds and learn to be better every day.

Through this love from our Savior and the love we have witnessed in our friends and family, we found our way back to each other to create an even stronger bond than the one we had when we first met. We began to learn what love really was - all of the nitty gritty real tough stuff that fairy tales don't talk about. But this love was almost better than a fairy tale, because we chose it and fought for it and believed in it.

We are so excited to make our lifelong commitment of love for each other, a love we believe is an action and everyday choice that we are eager to make! We are also so excited to make this commitment in front of so many of our friends and family. We truly believe that our love is only possible because we first watched you all love us.

Nate's time to story tell!

The plans I had for proposing to Beth had probably changed at least 5-10 times. Not because I had any hesitation, because being with Beth makes a guy feel Fearless. However when you have a trip to France planned, you really cannot pass up that opportunity due to the Folklore of Paris being the city of love. On the first night in Paris, Beth wanted to do one of her favorite traditions, getting pizza and wine under the Eiffel Tower at Midnights.

Thanks to our friends the Marshalls (No relation) I had the perfect camera and video crew on sight. So after a metro ride to the tower where yours truly could barely string a sentence together, we arrive at the tower. As the tower starts to sparkle, I get on one knee and ask my best friend to do this crazy thing we call life together for now and evermore. Cheered on by the pictured group of random French teens. We are so wonderfully excited to start this life together.