June 26, 2020 was an exciting day for both the Cross and Malinowski families. We left Illinois and drove to Tennessee to meet up at a family friend's ranch for a fun vacation... at least that is why Lauryn thought we were going. Having to get 11 people 7 hours away took a lot of planning, but it could not have turned out any better. The craziest part was that Lauryn was the hardest person out of the group to get to commit to going on the trip. She said she was just going to have to miss it because of her finals she had for her summer school. Thankfully, the finals were moved and she was able to go. The next challenge was to get a girl who usually would take an hour and a half out of her day to get dressed up to sit at home dressed for the big event. We could not get her to dress up no matter how many hints we threw at her! She was not going to dress up or curl her hair because she said that there’s no point when we are sitting in the car for 7 hours… she wanted to be comfy! We finally decided that we would just stop at the hotel for her to get ready and finally convinced her that we were going to have a “fancy dinner” that she needed to make sure she looked nice for. She ended up leaving home dressed for the event.

Lauryn and I had previously talked about getting engaged, but she could have sworn she was going to have to wait the rest of her life and it was definitely not going to happen this specific weekend. When we pulled up to our friend’s shed, my mom had everything set up for me. There were candles inside of lanterns lighting the pathway, posters with pictures of us around the table, and our favorite song “Big Big Plans” by Chris Lane was playing as we walked up to the spot where I would propose to her. On the table I had a big pink final rose that I gave Lauryn because in her favorite show, The Bachelorette, the bachelor gives the girl he wants to be with a final rose. It could not have gone any better and to say the least she was very surprised. She said over and over when I asked her to marry me, she was not going to cry, but we all know it was too good for her not to cry!

Lauryn and I could not be happier with the way the weekend turned out, and we are both beyond excited for July 2!