I met Emma during my junior year, her sophomore year, of undergrad at the University of Illinois. In February 2022, I was an interviewer for my professional pre-law fraternity, Kappa Alpha Pi (KAP). Emma was placed in my Zoom breakout room. I remember her nervous smile as she awaited the questions from me and the other interviewer. She told us so much about her activities on campus and how she was involved in Greek life. In our organization-wide deliberations, I remember the other interviewer knocking her for being in a sorority. I vigorously defended her, and made sure that her interview stood on its own.


Once Emma was accepted into KAP, I met with her at Joe’s - one of the campus bars. Being a little nervous myself, I made the remark that she looked like my cousin Morgan’s friend; bringing us to the first selfie we took to send to her—a whopping 6 months before we started dating.

Eventually, she made her way into my friend group. Afterwards, our friend group would meet in the library and study together. During finals week, we hung out nearly every day as people from our friend group returned home. In our last moments on campus, I told her to let me know if she was ever free over the summer so we could hang out. But she never reached out and we never did!

When I arrived back on campus, we met up again and started going to the bars with our mutual friends. When everyone was tipsy and sloppy, it got leaked to me by one of our mutual friends that Emma actually had a thing for me last semester. I immediately went to try and find her. When I did, she grabbed my hand in the crowd of people at Kam’s, and dragged me to buy a drink.

After admitting our feelings for each other, we went on our first date on 8/25/2022. Our relationship evolved fast, and I knew that Emma would be the one for me the first month we started dating because of how compatible we were with one another. As I finished my Senior year, our relationship expanded new depths, as I figured out where I wanted to work and live after college.

Towards the end of spring semester, Alex got a job offer at an accounting firm in St. Louis. Shortly after he moved there, we adopted our two cats - Memo and Alma!

While I was super excited for him to be living in my hometown, I still had one semester left in Champaign. Being apart from each other was difficult, especially because we had spent nearly every single day together since we started dating. Fortunately, being long distance only lasted a semester, and it made our relationship even stronger.

I graduated from UIUC in December 2023 and moved back home to St. Louis. Alex and I began living together in Tower Grove East, and I started my first job post-grad. Together, we navigated living in our new neighborhood while Alex experienced his first ever tax season. Soon after, we started discussing the possibility of moving to Chicago, where Alex grew up. I’ll admit it, it was very hard for him to convince me to take the risk of moving to a brand new city 4 and a half hours away from home. Despite my initial doubts, in August of 2024, we made the move to Chicago! Even with the traffic, brutal winters, and my long reverse commute, moving here was easily the best decision we could’ve made.

Alex and I knew very early on (quite literally a month into dating) that we wanted to get married one day. Once we moved to Chicago and got settled in, getting engaged started to feel like our natural next step. May 24th, 2025 started out like any other Saturday. The night before, Alex told me he wanted to go on a picnic the next day. Picnics were not something we usually did, so I became a little suspicious, but he was so casual about it that I wrote it off as nothing. That afternoon, we went to a Memorial Day party. Alex was acting SUPER weird - not eating and barely talking - not like him at all! He rushed us out of the party after an hour for the picnic. We arrived at Lincoln Park Zoo when Alex said he was taking me to the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool. As soon as we walked in, I immediately thought “this is NOT a picnic spot”. I was hungry and ready to start eating, but Alex insisted we walk around. At that moment, I felt like something was about to happen.. We walked over to the pond, and before I knew it, he was proposing! Alex truly put together the most thoughtful proposal - it was a dream come true!


Throughout our 3 years together, we have been long distance, navigated job changes, new cities, and more. The one thing that has remained constant is eachother. We are so excited to get married surrounded by all of our favorite people!