Our story starts in the Fall of 2017 in Spokane, Washington. We started attending Whitworth University together, becoming acquaintances with overlapping friend groups. Our groups grew apart over the years, but we bumped into each other often and always had great impressions of each other. One example was a Sunday morning at church where she expressed how blown away she was by some photos I posted. After I left Whitworth to finish my engineering degree in St. Louis, we occasionally stayed in contact. She once sent me pictures of some of her cake decorations and I was dumbfounded at how good they were. But as long as I was in St. Louis and she was in Spokane, there wasn’t much bringing us together.

But things started to change once I saw her announcement online that she was moving to San Diego, where I often have family vacation. Excitedly, I instantly messaged her (“No way that’s hype!”) and wondered if I could meet up with her. Over the next couple of months, this thought grew as I started looking for reasons to reach out to her. Once I saw a vulnerable post she made on social media, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to write her a letter affirming her. But the real reason I wanted to write the letter was to express my impression of her as a sweet, peaceful girl and my desire to be better friends. After reading the cute letter she wrote back, I just knew I had to go see her.

A couple months later, I finally had a trip for San Diego planned for a couple of weeks. We caught up on our first date, and the sparks started flying. A couple hours in, we were walking on the beach and already joking and laughing with each other in-between deep conversations. That was on a Wednesday, and 4 dates later by next Monday I knew I was going to marry her.

We were then faced with a year of long distance ahead of us. We were able to see each other about once a month, with each visit leaving us deeper in love than the last. It was the plan for Emily to move to St. Louis after a last summer in San Diego, but both of us were feeling like that day was taking forever to arrive. Shortly before the move we became engaged, and are now living the dream of being in the same city together before we get married!

- Will