I met Sarah at a Packers-Vikings watch party with some people in the church’s Young Adult group. As I wanted to join their Bible studies, my friend Evan thought this gathering would be a good way to meet everyone. The first time Sarah smiled at me after I walked through the door will always be one of my happier memories. I figured it wouldn’t be a good look to immediately pursue the pastor’s daughter of the church I had not begun to attend, so I waited for a while before making any advances. During that first meeting, I learned that Sarah and I had a lot in common: we loved skiing, camping/hiking, learning and speaking Spanish, and that “Chicken in a Biscuit” crackers were a mutual favorite snack. Being a big Brewers fan, I was rightfully cautious when I learned that she was a Cubs fan. But since she was from Iowa, I successfully convinced her to become a Packers fan. A few weeks later, Sarah texted me the link for the Bible study videos we were watching. Another week or two later, I sent her a text to wish her a safe and fun ski trip with the middle schoolers (where Sarah was working at the time). That soon led to Sarah and I hanging out more regularly as friends. Feelings began to blossom from there. However, since she was leaving for Cambodia in a few months, we did not want to make anything official at that time. The feelings grew stronger anyway, and we eventually started calling our meetings “dates” and seeing one another much more often. I wanted to revisit our conversation about waiting until she got back from Cambodia to make things “official.” Sarah said, “I don’t think we’ll be making it until summer.” This created an inside joke between us that June 20th (the last day of spring) would be our deadline. Though we became official even before then, the “June 20th” joke followed us all the way to our wedding day.

I met Jacob through our Young Adult Bible Study on December 31, 2023. This group had a New Year's Eve party to watch football and play board games together. Jacob was invited to this get-together by Evan (a groomsman). Evan thought this party was a good way to introduce him to the other people in our Bible Study without the extra pressure of jumping right into a study (spoiler alert, Jacob started attending our Bible Study regularly after New Year's Eve). When I saw Jacob walk through the door, I thought he was pretty cute, but I kept my distance. At one point during the night, Jacob mentioned how he was single. After learning that, I flirted with him while we played a game called ‘Pit’ with the group. He seemed to be flirting back, but we never exchanged phone numbers. Two weeks later, Jacob was going to miss one of our Bible studies because of a family wedding. I used this as an excuse to ask Evan for Jacob's number. We were following a video series, and I “needed to text him the link for that week's study so that he wouldn’t fall behind.” After this text, Jacob and I started talking more and more outside of our studies. Eventually, that led to us hanging out together without the rest of the people in the study. All that was left was to start calling them “dates,” so we did! On these dates, it felt like I had known Jacob my whole life. We immediately clicked, and I felt comfortable being myself around him. After a few months of going on dates and learning how much we had in common, we decided to make it “official.”

On August 24, 2025, Jacob took Sarah and Ruby on a walk at Pigeon Creek. Sarah knew something was off because Jacob had music playing, and they never listened to music on their walks. Sarah made a comment that Jacob was acting weird. Jacob claimed that he is always weird. Sarah said he was right, but that this was a different kind of weird than usual. Partway through the walk, Jacob had everyone take a break to sit at a picnic table by the water. Once sitting down, Jacob had Sarah look through a photo album of pictures from their whole relationship that he had put together. Jacob kept making Sarah move where she was sitting, so this was another sign to Sarah that something was going on. Ruby was sniffing around in the weeds, so Sarah thought there might be someone hiding, taking pictures, which also explained her needing to sit in a specific spot. Eventually, Sarah flipped through the rest of the photo album and poems that Jacob put a lot of time and thought into. Once she got to the end, Jacob got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. Sarah was sobbing, but eventually choked out a ‘yes.’ Then Max (the best man) came out of the woods decked out in camouflage, holding a camera and two beers for Sarah and Jacob to celebrate.