It all began at Shades! We were both born into Shades which is where we became friends. Although we can't remember when we met since we were so little, we have lots and lots of memories throughout the years to make up for it!

At this age we weren't exactly the fondest of each other! We occasionally carpooled and wouldn't speak a word to each other. One 4th of July, William used a tennis racket to pelt pine cones at me. At family dinners we stayed as far away as possible. Our dads would offer us $20 to sit next to each other and we STILL said no. Maybe we were in denial!

An all time favorite photo. By this point, we were actually friends instead of forced to be. However neither of us were fond of dancing together at etiquette class. And of course our moms both happened to show up that night to take our picture. As you can see we weren't very happy about it.

Once we got to high school, we were finally in the same friend group! Here we are touring Samford together. Of course we were JUST one of each others best friends though, right? We used to tease each other relentlessly, until our junior year. Then our texts became a little less teasing, we maybe would ride with each other here and there, and of course our teacher would get onto us every morning for talking in class. Of course all our friends had always said we would end up together, but now we're not so repulsed by that...

We spent a LOT of time together the summer after junior year. We will always look back on that summer and smile. We couldn't really pretend we didn't like each other anymore! I had never liked anyone as much as I liked William! We started dating right after the summer ended.

We finally got to go to a school dance together! This is one of our favorite memories. Although we were having lots of fun making memories together, dating didn't seem quite right for us. It was hard going from being just friends to boyfriend and girlfriend! We didn't want anything to hurt our friendship so we took a brief intermission, which now just makes us giggle.

Our brief intermission obviously didn't work very well! We became the best of friends this spring, which is exactly what we needed! We realized on our trip to Guatemala that we go better together! We started hanging out ALL the time. On April 18, we went to have a picnic! SURELY he likes me back, right?! We had our first kiss that night and I told him I couldn't kiss someone I wasn't dating! He's stuck with me now!

We spent the whole summer together! I realized how much I truly loved William. I was able to look back at all those years of us "not liking" each other and realize what a constant he has always been in my life. We were about to head into Samford together. It became so clear to us that we wanted to spend the rest of our life together!!!

4 years at Samford flew by! The Lord taught us so much over the course of our time there and helped us build a strong foundation for our relationship. We made more memories than we can count and left with some wonderful friends! The summer after we graduated, William tore his ACL. We had always wanted to get engaged this summer, and it was clear the Lord had different plans. Instead, I moved to Disney, as I had always dreamed of doing the College Program. Once William recovered from his injury, he accepted a job in Gainesville, Florida in the athletic apartment! Truly his dream job. Long distance was never our plan but we will always praise Jesus for leading us to it! At this point we were both able to do something we always dreamed of because of the Lord's timing. But now it's April... I think it's time to put an end to this whole long distance thing!

After 5 years of dating, William asked me to marry him! The easiest and most joy filled YES of my life! I will never be able to thank the Lord enough that he brought us together so young and truly allowed us to grow up together. We are so ready to be married and spend the rest of our days serving each other and our Father! All praise be to Him!