In the spring of Valerie’s freshman year and Jonathan’s junior year at Binghamton University, the two attended a mixer their sorority and fraternity were throwing together. The theme of the mixer was paint, so the night was messy. Jon went up to Val, both of them completely full of paint from head to toe, and as soon as they started chatting, there was instant chemistry. They starting joking around with each other and even joked about being soul-mates and long lost best friends the very first night they met. Little did they know how true that would be…

Over the course of the next few weeks after the first time meeting, Val would randomly run into Jon on campus and downtown. They started to see more and more of each other everywhere they went (and they had never seen each other before that paint mixer!) Jon knew things were serious when Val spotted Jon through the crowd at Spring Fling, at an outdoor concert with thousands of students attending. Val pushed her way through the crowd to say hi, and Jon knew she was interested. The two officially started dating on June 20th, 2014.

Flash forward 5 years later, Jon and Val decided to celebrate their 5 year anniversary by going on a trip to Mexico. The first night of their trip, they got ready to go to dinner and Jon lead Val towards a gazebo right by the water. Jon got down on one knee and asked Val to spend the rest of their lives together. Through happy tears, Val managed to say “YES” and put on the most gorgeous ring! The two then enjoyed a romantic private dinner on the pier. They celebrated throughout their entire trip and it will always be a vacation they’ll never forget!