Kaitlin:

We met playing Dungeons and Dragons with some mutual friends back in early 2021. Even though we were both in the music department at Delta State together, we had never really crossed paths. Turns out, and this may be surprising, that spending 5 hours straight with someone every Thursday night for months makes you closer.

One campaign turned into another, then another, and we ended up spending most of our free time around each other.

On October 8 2022, I invited Ethan to come with me to the local Octoberfest celebration (definitely not as a date... or at least, I didn't admit to him that I wanted it to be one.) We talked for hours, I listened to most of the soundtrack for a video game (mostly listening to Ethan's analysis of it), and had a wonderful time. We had our first kiss parked outside of the music building, and it didn't take us long to start officially dating after that.

^ Ethan on that fateful October day...

Ethan:

By the time we had officially moved in together I had thought about waiting for more signs that things would align. One cat became three, the apartment in Cleveland became a house in Horn Lake, and I went on to write music while she taught it in a nearby school. Realizing quickly that I spent days returning home to someone who was interested in everything I did, raved about, or experienced, AND that I wanted to know if they had the same good day (or comfort them if it wasn't good...)

I felt that one too many obvious hints had been thrown my way. I hadn't felt at home anywhere but with family, and yet here in Horn Lake I thought I had and will have everything I need.

So then it took two years for me to plan it.

Ethan:

I started officially planning in May of 2025. I decided on July 24, 2025 so that there would be nothing else going on -- a day that we could have for ourselves (like October 10) years later. I wanted to show that, though I assumed she would say yes, I would treat the proposal as seriously as possible. I decided (with the help of my dad) on St. John's Restaurant in Chattanooga, TN, a ring that Kaitlin had picked out years before, and the best cover story ever:

My dad wanted to eat there with both of us.

^ Pictures from our Chattanooga Trip!

Kaitlin:

I want it to be made known that I figured out what was going on about 2 hours into the car ride to Chattanooga. Ethan is not a very good liar (which is endearing) and when I had asked him to check what time his dad would be meeting us, well... let's just say the way he responded piqued my suspicions. However, I love a puzzle, and had been trying to guess when I would be getting proposed to for a while at that point, and so once he did pop the question after dinner, I was ecstatic to be able to say "YES!"

(I was also very satisfied to have guessed the correct weekend for the proposal, to be quite honest.)