Mack and I first started talking to each other around the beginning of July 2016 on a dating website called Coffee Meets Bagel. At this time I was in the process of moving apartments and changing positions at work and wasn’t quite sure if I was ready to start seeing someone with all the other changes going on in my life, but Mack was persistent and ended up asking me on our first date on July 23rd. He went above and beyond when planning our date! He took me to downtown Raleigh where we went to The Pitt for dinner to break the ice. Then, he took me to Boxcar, which is a bar and arcade where you can play classic arcade games. After that, we walked across Raleigh to Coglin's (my favorite bar) and ended the night at a speakeasy bar called The Architect (his favorite bar). After that night, we went on many other dates over the next year and moved in together the next summer. Over the 4 years together we have went to countless concerts; traveled to see friends and family from Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana; went on numerous adventures; and have enjoyed many hours spending time together at home with our dogs!

I SAID YES 💍 :

If you know Mack he is super romantic and loves to plan surprises, so planning a super secret romantic proposal was right up his alley! He had bought the engagement ring way back in December and had been plotting a big proposal for when we were supposed to travel to Europe for the month of June, but unfortunately we had to cancel our trip due to Covid-19. So Mack started planning a new proposal right under my nose! This time he had some of our closest friends in on it to help him out. On Monday June 15 Mack told me he made reservations to go to dinner at The Pitt (from our first date), I had some suspicions that he was planning something but wasn't quite sure what. When we got out of the car and was walking over to The Pitt, Mack told me he wanted to go into Boxcar and see what they were doing for Covid. This was strange because they were closed due to the states restrictions and all boarded up due to the riots. He opened the side gate and started to walk towards the back door when I pointed out that was not the entrance and that they were closed (it is not unlike him to explore areas that he is not suppose to) but I followed behind him anyways. When we walked into the side door of Boxcar I saw four people sitting at the bar with their back to us. As we got closer I recognized who they were just as they turned around to show us that they were all wearing white t-shirts that made the sentence ‘will' 'you' 'marry' 'me' '?’ (our friends baby was the question mark)! Mack then got down on one knee and pulled out the ring inside a beautiful origami rose box! and I SAID YES! Afterwards, we all ate dinner together at The Pit to celebrate our engagement.