So, I was kind of a recluse freshman year. And like all good best men, Drea was looking out for us from the very beginning. She sort of forced me to leave my dorm room to go to a poetry slam because she worked as a desk worker at my building. Mostly, she was worried that I hadn't left for anything other than coffee and class in several days.

After dragging me out of the dorm, she took me to our Union building, Skutt, to at least listen to poems if not preform them. There, Drea introduced me to her friend Luke. Drea and Luke were tight since their freshman year, and I was waiting for people, at least slightly, more extraverted than me to adopt me. It worked out in my favor so when I went home for the holidays I could tell my parents I did something fun and that I had "friends." Like real ones ... with names.

Later in the semester, the coffee maker on the Arts and Sciences side of campus broke. So, I had to get my fix on the Business side of campus. I trekked across the cobblestone path to the Harper Center. I waited for my coffee and then plopped down on one of the sofas because it was cold, and I didn't feel like walking back to my dorm with coffee that was just going to get cold. As I was sitting in Harper Center, Luke came over to say hello. I have a hard time recognizing people, and I was glad he remembered me. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have noticed. We proceeded to have an extensive conversation about theology and world building in Lewis and Tolkien's novels. At the very least, I knew that I had made a life long friend. I don't know if either of us knew what the journey ahead of us would hold.

Many of our closest friends claim it was obvious we were smitten with one another from that first long conversation about our favorite authors. The only problem was, we were the only ones who didn't see it. While there were a few awkward attempts at flirting from both sides at first, we quickly settled into a wonderful friendship based on our shared love of books, poetry, and late night ramblings with our mutual friends. I was wonderstruck by the way poems would spring fully formed from her mind, while the rest of us toiled for days over a single verse. Maybe that should have been a sign?

The summer after that year, I was in Milwaukee for my second internship with GE Healthcare. As fate would have it, she was home that summer with her family. We were both a bit lonely, and started spending a lot of time together. I would pick her up and take her to coffee shops or local events. When we returned we would spend hours sitting in my car discussing our favorite stories, but also life, love, heartbreak, and so much more. It was during one of these conversations in which she told me about both the best and worst kisses she had ever received, and I agreed emphatically with her assessment of what made the best ones. Maybe that should have been a sign?

As she would tell it, her family wanted proof that she had friends made of real flesh and blood, rather than paper and words. They started inviting me to events, including her Dad's 50th birthday party at Lake Geneva. We think her Dad may have had ulterior motives (spoiler alert: he did, and it worked). Some things were certainly stirring in each of us, but neither was ready to admit it. We needed a kick in the pants, and that would come in the form of her upcoming Semester abroad in Ireland.

I returned to Omaha early, to help out with welcoming new students to Creighton. As I mentioned, I had been feeling pretty lonely that summer. I had started using online dating, and had been talking with someone in Omaha. Right as I got home from my first date, I get a call from Shannon. After some small talk, she says "You know that time when we talked about kissing? Would you, maybe, like to do that with me someday?" I was suddenly hit with the realization of all of feelings we had been harboring, and all the missed opportunities. But she was going to Ireland, and I had just been on a pretty good date. I told, her I was interested, but we would have to wait to see how things were going for us each wen she got back.

While I went on a few more dates, in the end it did not work out (and in no small part, I think God was saving me for Shannon). We kept up through facetime, and updates mutual friends were pulling from Tumblr, and when she returned we decided to see where things went. We started spending a lot more time with each other, and more openly flirting, but Shannon was still working through a lot of personal things. It took us a couple of months, but finally we decided to go on our first date. Afterword, I finally went for it, and asked her if she wanted a kiss. She did. It was exactly how I'd imagined it when she was describing what she liked in her car all those months before. After that we started dating, and I'll let her tell that part.

[KRISTOFF]
Love's not an easy climb:/You have to take your time!

[ANNA]
We get a whole life, that's the plan

[KRISTOFF, spoken]
That's not a plan!

~"What Do You Know About Love" Frozen the Musical

Luke and I had this argument several times throughout the course of our dating relationship. Luke is spontaneous in ways that I am not. He likes to take trips slow and not plan much of anything in advance. I am type-A, and everything is planned months in advance. I pack at least a week ahead of schedule, and I'm ready for anything. However, when it comes to relationships, I am the one who is more of a spontaneous loose cannon, and Luke is the one who wants to work through everything right away. These lyrics are very representative of the people we are in the relationship we have.

The characters Anna and Kristoff hold deep significance to us. The characters became personal to us because Anna highly resilient and cares deeply about her family, and Kristoff has a deep respect for Anna after her unfortunate experiences with her past boyfriend. (Plus, Luke's Norwegian. Double Plus, we look like them.) Also, Kristoff's "Lost in the Woods" song in Frozen 2 is Luke to a T. Anyone who has ever driven with him without a GPS will understand this.

As Luke mentioned, my parents still didn't believe that my friends were real, and they took advantage of Luke being there to force me to prove his existence. As in, they wanted me to have him over. We are still uncertain as to whether or not my dad had ulterior motives. (Spoiler Alert: They worked.)

We started dating March 3rd 2015. Luke was a perfect gentleman. Before he kissed me on our way back from our first official date, he asked me if he could kiss me. Boys in the audience, that's how it's done.

As we started to figure out housing for the following year, my summer plans for where to keep my things started to fall through the cracks. Luke and Drea were graduating, and I was going to move in with some friends. Drea was leaving for Boston, and Luke was staying in Omaha. However, the apartment I was supposed to move into with friends was suddenly not available. So, we decided to take an impromptu road trip with all of my things back home to my parent's house. However, we decided to stop in Luke's hometown on our way back to Milwaukee. The car ride consisted of a long conversation about relationships and what ours would hold.

Senior year led to many meetings of new and wonderful friends. We met many people who had been in long term relationships. We even made friends who were already married, and some who were on their way to engagement. We also managed to keep our old friends despite the distance. We welcomed Brian into our friend group, and I may or may not have interrogated the crap out of him before I allowed him to date Krista. That year was filled with a lot of wonderful memories. They include: the Corpse Bride couples costume we wore for Halloween, the decoration of our first Christmas tree, and Luke's first family trip to Oakbrook. (Yay Elf Hats!) However, we also struggled with some things. Luke's desire to work out every kink in our relationship was sometimes at odds with work that I needed to do. Yet, we managed to overcome the difficulty as we pushed forward.

Then, we entered the dreaded long distance relationship. I was adamant that I did not want to be placed in Milwaukee for my grad program in Magis. Yet, for some reason, that's exactly where I went. Milwaukee was the furthest placement one could receive from Omaha. I asked Luke if I could take the placement when it opened, and he gave me his blessing.

The first year of Magis was pretty hectic, and our communication was terrible. I was adjusting to being a first year teacher, and Luke was trying to respect the boundaries I needed as I went through the year. A love for my students was awoken in a deep way, and I realized I did not want to leave them or my family. We eventually decided that we were going to move to Milwaukee after my graduation because I couldn't bear to part with my students. There were several other factors in our decision, however, I was the most adamant about this one. This year was also filled with a lot of work on both of our parts. We were both trying and succeeding, through patient industry, to become better for each other.

The second summer after this first year of Magis was a joyful reunion. I remember mentioning that the first thing I wanted to do when I got to Omaha was kiss my boyfriend during one of our last faith sharing nights. However, strep throat had other plans. I spent the first week back from teaching sleeping and making up work. I only expected to be doing one of those things. The summer was awesome and left us with a lot of time to do the fun stuff we'd been waiting for that long time away. I was not looking forward to leaving, but we'd decided on a pretty good routine of when to call and talk to each other that upcoming year. We'd also managed to make good plans about when we would have time to meet up with each other.

The second year of Magis was stressful, but not nearly as stressful as the first. We made way more time to talk to one another than we'd planned and managed to make and keep dates to see each other. I got to witness the proposal of two of my closest friends, and I got to attend their wedding with my best friend.

I had inklings that all the hard work that we had put into our relationship was going to work out when Luke didn't flinch at booking Gesu for our wedding date ahead of the engagement. I knew the proposal had to be coming. I was excited and antsy. I wanted the rest of our lives and the fairy tale ending I'd been promised since I stole my Dad's Sony CD player to fall asleep to Phantom of the Opera to come now. However, as Luke will tell you, the wait was well worth it.

Early on in our relationship, we adopted the phrase "adventure is out there" from the movie Up, as our moto. This held so true - from the way it began, to overcoming challenges of distance, to the personal and spiritual growth that came along the way. I really wanted to embody this in the way that I asked her to marry me. We had been discussing marriage for quite some time, and she knew it had to be coming soon, so there was all the more incentive to make it special.

I wanted it to embody the things that had been most meaningful to our love: 1. Our friends, 2. the concept of adventure, and 3. the written word. The plan started at the beginning of Advent. The previous year, I had given her the gift, to great effect, of a daily advent Calendar with notes for every day, and candy, gift cards, or other small treats, since we couldn't be together for the build up to Christmas. This memory, and her Elf like love of Christmas drove me to want to do it around the Holidays. Leading up to the proposal, I repeated the Advent Calendar tradition, with small gifts and notes each day. The notes were, I hope, increasingly romantic and sappy as we approached the big day. Her Christmas gift was a collectible book of Tolkien art, and inside was one more note, the first clue to a treasure hunt that would be her next adventure.

After Christmas we went to Omaha, to visit our friends Brian and Krista (who were in on the secret). The day was modeled after and RPG game, where Shannon would have to solve clues and complete tasks like sword fighting Krista on the Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge, reprising our first kiss, and signing a favorite song to get the next clue. Along the way, different friends would be a part of the tasks, and would "join our party" as we made our way toward the end. One of the best moments was when she started signing "Raise a glass to the four of us" and our friend Alessandra, who had flow in from Boston and Shannon was not expecting to see, came in on queue from another booth to finish "tomorrow there'll be more of us." The look on Shannon's face, and the hugs and tears that followed were almost as awesome to me as final twist.

We ended up at Creighton, in front of Saint John's church. A place that meant so much to us, and was only feet from where we met. As she was reading the last "clue" on the steps of the church, another great friend (and Shannon's sorority grand big) Claire, was lurking in the bushes snapping photos. The clue told her not to turn around until instructed, and that was when I got down on my knee. As she finished, I asked her to turn around. And then I asked her to marry me, starting the biggest adventure of my life to date. She said yes!

I am so happy that we were able to begin this step in our journey surrounded by great friends, and with just a taste of the joy, whimsy, and love Shannon brings to my life every day. We can hardly express how excited we are to take the next step with all of that and more, and with all of you surrounding us.