Meeting at Summer Camp

Our story begins on a mountaintop in North Carolina in 2016. It was the summer before our senior year of high school. We had just finished hiking up to the campsite at Pioneer Plunge, a Young Life camp, when I first met Caroline. I immediately took notice of her. Among all the campers and staff, Caroline was the one with the most energy. I wondered, “Who is this cute girl with a huge smile, bouncing around with her hiking backpack, inviting everyone to play games?” (She hasn't changed much). Caroline and I got to know each other in that week we spent living in the woods—sleeping in hammocks, building fires, and showering in a river. I sensed there was something special that attracted me to Caroline, but that perfect week eventually came to an end. She returned to Ponte Vedra, and I went back to Naples.

Reconnecting in Tallahassee

Turns out, that wouldn't be our last "perfect week". Both Caroline and I ended up attending Florida State for college. Our paths crossed multiple times during our freshman year. Her sorority was paired with my fraternity for homecoming, and we both attended college Young Life. However, it wasn't until Chloe Cannan and Cam Heise came up to Tallahassee that our friendship truly took off. Suddenly, there were about eight people from that Pioneer Plunge trip who were all studying in Tallahassee. We formed a close-knit group of friends, with a noticeable quartet that became inseparable: Blan, Chloe, Caroline, and Aaron.

Year of Friendship

We did about everything together as a group of four. Blan and I even visited Ponte Vedra, Chloe and Caroline’s hometown. Caroline and I slowly started finding things to do with just us. We often met up to go on runs together around Cascades Park. Our study nights would usually turn into long hours of chatting. Our most notable endeavor together was a challenge called “The Perfect Week”, in which we had to spend $5 every day for a week straight at Township in order to win the grand prize, a $60 gift card and a whole lot of clout around campus. For Caroline and me, it also meant a string of 7 straight dates. One night, The Farmer family joined us at Township, and it was obvious that she fit in perfectly with my family, and somehow Cooper already loved her. After this week, I knew I couldn’t go any longer being just friends.

Dating

Finally after a year of being best friends, on October 24th, 2019, I told Caroline “I think we should talk about us”, and proceeded to ask her out on a date. She was so surprised and neither of us could contain our excitement that night. We went on our first date to Backwoods Bistro on Halloween. The record is not exactly straight on this, but I’m pretty sure both of us admitted that we wanted to marry each other that night. During the pandemic, we spent weeks at a time at each of our parents homes. With school online, we had the the rare opportunity to get to know each others families very well early on in our relationship. We eventually were back in person at Florida State. Caroline did a five-year program at FSU and I spent my gap year working in Tallahassee, so we didn’t start long-distance until summer of 2022. I started school in Miami in fall and Caroline moved to Charlotte, NC that winter. 2023 has been full of weekend trips to Charlotte or Miami for us. On March 4, I asked Caroline’s parents to dinner and read them a letter I wrote, asking for their blessing to marry Caroline. I got Grandma’s “stamp of approval” and we were ready to go. We started laying the groundwork on how to surprise her.

Engagement

A few days before the proposal, my Dad and I dropped Caroline off at the airport after a weekend in Nashville. She was flying home to Charlotte, and she believed that I was flying to Miami later that night. In reality, after we said goodbye, I went with my parents to get a rental car, and we headed straight to North Carolina. (Caroline and I had stopped sharing our locations with each other about a year ago specifically for days like this). At the same time, Caroline’s sister Lauren was on her way to Charlotte, to meet Caroline and their cousin, Katherine Heffner, for a “girls weekend.”

The first (and only) activity of the girls weekend was an afternoon hike in Asheville. I planned for months with Katherine and Lauren to find a way to get Caroline on top of a mountain naturally, and they executed it perfectly. On July 6th, Caroline, Lauren, Katherine, and Kat’s boyfriend Nick, met at the base of Craggy Pinnacle Trail. They all agreed to “dress cute” so that they could take pictures at the top and go straight to dinner after the hike. What Caroline didn’t know was that I was at the peak waiting for her, with our masterful photographer hiding in the bushes beside me. I paced back and forth at the top of this mountain for 1.5 hours waiting for her to get to me. Finally, I heard her voice in the distance. As the group made it to the final part of the hike, they let Caroline take the lead. As she turned the corner, she was shocked to see me. The pictures and videos tell the story so well. We were once again on a mountain top in North Carolina, unable to contain our excitement. And once again I told Caroline “I think we should talk about us”. I proceeded to get down on one knee (just as I had practiced, 90º and 90º (thanks Lauren)) and asked Caroline to marry me. After drinking champagne in the clouds and taking the best pictures of our lives, we drove back to Asheville, where Caroline was surprised again by so many of our family and friends who came to celebrate with us. We had an unforgettable night at The Restoration Hotel’s rooftop bar. It wast the most special day of our lives.

Photos