How We Met
I met Colten on May 6, 2013 while I was visiting a private Christian school. My family had been attending the church connected with the school for several years and my parents were looking into enrolling me and my sister for my junior and senior year. I was skeptical, but then I met Colten. I was shadowing another student that day, and in her first hour class, a super cute boy with brown eyes and shaggy hair and the sweetest smile I had ever seen, came over and introduced himself to me. I was immediately and utterly charmed.
To make it even better, he asked where I lived, which is a very small rural town half an hour from the school, and it turned out he lived only a couple of miles away! I joke with him now that I didn’t make such an impression on him because he came and reintroduced himself at last three more times that day (he swears he just kept wanting to talk to me and assumed I didn’t remember him). However, little did he know, I couldn’t have forgotten him if I’d tried. I didn’t know what it was, but something about that Colten was so different to me, and I immediately knew that that was not a normal meeting. It was absolutely love at first sight.
Over the summer before the new school year started, I couldn’t forget about Colten. I met several different people who would ask me where I went to school and then would ask if I knew Colten and his twin sister Brooke. I would pass him or randomly sit near him at our church, which is quite large, when I can’t remember having done so before. I couldn’t get him off my mind, and it seemed God kept placing him in my path. As the new school year started, we became friends, and I fell deeper for him.
We only had one class together (which I may or may not have switched my schedule to get…) but we sat together and as we became friends, that 45 minutes a day definitely set the foundation for our relationship. However, nothing really happened between us that school year besides a little flirting and hints being dropped by friends. Then, the summer following our Junior year of high school, he invited me to go bowling with him and his sister, and after that the three of us began doing more and more things together. Over that summer, we both made our feelings for each other completely obvious (though I think they were pretty obvious to everyone else way before), but never quite made it official.
Though I am not naturally a very patient person, I was so deeply in love with Colten that I would have waited 20 years for him to ask me out. Fortunately, I didn’t actually have to wait that long, and on October 2, 2014, Colten told me that he loved me. From that day on, we have been completely inseparable, so much so that our high school friends would joke that we were simply one person. I am so thankful to have spend my high school days with him-all the football games, sharing memories, our Senior Prom. By meeting our soulmate so young, we were spared so much heartbreak and years of wondering when we would meet The One. God used Colten to change all of my plans, and I could not be more thankful. Colten is so, so perfect for me, we support each other, love each other, encourage each other, protect each other, and care for each other. With everything in me, I firmly believe we were made for each other.
how they asked
For our second anniversary, Colten set up a photoshoot with a photographer friend who used to teach at our school. We picked out a gorgeous park where we had also taken our Senior Prom pictures and met the photographer there the Saturday after our anniversary. It was 75 degrees and sunny, a perfect October day, and I was so excited. Little did I know, both of our families were waiting near by, and he had the most perfect diamond ring hidden in his cowboy boot. As we walked around taking pictures, he was secretly looking for the perfect place to propose. We took about 20 minutes of pictures, before we walked up on a rock ledge to take some more. Then, he reached down to “fix his sock” and next thing I knew, he was on one knee, telling me how much he loved me, and asking me to be his wife.
I hardly let him finish before the tears came to my eyes and I reached down to kiss him, both uncontrollable responses.
It was the perfect day, the perfect proposal, the most perfect ring, and I absolutely have the most perfect fiancé. We got a couple more shots, and then both of our families were there to celebrate with us. I am so thankful for everything Colten planned, and the way God set up the most perfect day. October 8, 2016, is absolutely one of my fondest memories and the day I will cherish for the rest of my life.
