How We Met
If you ask Nick how we met, he will tell you an entirely different story. We had a class together during the first semester of our Junior year in college. He remembers the exact moment he laid eyes on me, what I was wearing, down to the look on my face. Apparently, I was late and walked in in work out clothes laughing with an iced coffee in hand (if you know me..this could not be more typical lol). In Nick’s words “I thought instantly you were a complete show stopper.” From my point of view, I was so consumed with getting a seat near my friends that I didn’t notice anyone in the room, nevermind my future fiance. Nothing ever ended up happening that year, as I don’t remember ever seeing Nick in that class and he had a girlfriend at the time.
Flash forward almost exactly a year later. A mutual group of guys we were friends with were having a day party at their house. My friend and I went in there on a mission to find *new* guys to set our sights on, as Quinnipiac has a pretty small student body. A few hours later I find myself talking to a few guys I have never met before, one of which I thought was super dreamy. According to Nick, he knew I was super into him because I was laughing at everything he said (5 years later he know me better now that whenever I feel awkward or nervous I literally laugh at everything)…Regardless we definitely left an impression on eachother, even if he was too cool to take my number that the first day… For the next month, every time my friends and I would go out, I was always secretly on the poll for this dreamy guy, but he was literally never there. I would always beg my friends to nonchalantly ask his friends where he was and why he didn’t come out. Turns out he was studying for the LSAT (obviously made me like him even more because he was a nerd). I learned now that, he too, was always drilling into his friends when they would get home from the bar about if I was there and if I asked about him.
Finally, over a month later we ran into eachother at a popular club. I was standing in the hall of the men’s bathroom while my friend fought with her long distanced boyfriend as it was the only place she could hear him. The next thing I know, I see Nick walk out of the bathroom. We both stopped dead in our tracks and I swear my heart exploded right then (sorry to be mushy). Well, at the risk of keeping the story from getting too long, I will shorten things up a bit. Being that it was our senior year, Nick and I both wanted to devote the year to make the most of the time we had left with our best friends, so neither of us was looking for a relationship. And yet..we couldn’t stay away from eachother. He and his group of guy friends along with me and mine ended up becoming pretty much inseparable. We became a massive group of friends who made some of the most incredible memories together. Despite the clear connection between the two of us, Nick and I were still in complete denial for most of my senior year. It wasn’t until April 2016 when I asked Nick to my sorority formal that we started to openly acknowledge our feelings towards each other.
Then finally, two weeks before the end of senior year, Nick asked me to be his girlfriend at the wildest day drink for seniors at Quinnipiac, Bagels, and Booze. It was the most ridiculous, but appropriate way I could have ever imagined our love story beginning. Following this, Nick went away to law school at Brooklyn Law University and I stayed back in CT to get my Masters in Occupational Therapy. Long-distance in combination with law school was tough, but we did it. I began working in the city as an OT for children with special needs in April of 2018 and Nick became a tax associate for PWC. We moved in together after three years in Manhattan…and now we’re engaged!
How They Asked
I’m not one for concise stories, so I am going to try to keep the retelling of the best day of my life as short as possible. It was my birthday weekend and normally for my birthday Nick goes all out and we usually take some sort of vacation where he makes me feel like the most special girl in the world. However, this year because of COVID we couldn’t go anywhere, so he said he wanted to plan a staycation right here in the city for us. So, when he planned this elaborate weekend, most people would think it was a dead giveaway that he was proposing, but it didn’t exactly make me suspicious. Anyway.. first he took me to Brooklyn (a place where we spent the first three years of our relationship while he was in law school). Here, we began a private three-hour sailboat tour of the city. We had a picnic on the front of the boat listening to country music while we sailed around the city that has been our home together since 2016.
Then, we went back to the hotel where he had a stylist come to get me all glammed for what I thought was my birthday dinner. We then got in an Uber to take us to our dinner reservation on the water under the Brooklyn Bridge. However, Nick said he wanted to get a few photos of me by the water for my birthday. We started walking towards the water to the most beautiful spot by Jane’s Carousel in between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge right as the sun was beginning to set. I learned later that he actually bought a permit months beforehand to reserve this space, which thank God he did because while our family was setting everything up for him before the proposal, multiple people tried proposing in this very spot. When we turn the corner, I looked up and saw our ENTIRE family in a crowd. Including my little Italian grandma who is one of the most important people in the world to me. This especially meant so much because she has been SO frightened from the pandemic and has not left her home in almost 6 months. I knew that coming into the city of all places was really scary for her. Nick knew how much it would mean for me to have her there and took all of the necessary precautions to make her feel safe, so she would come.
Anyway..back to the story! I then see 13 huge banners of photos of us, across the past 5 years we have been together, hanging on the fence. I of course immediately start crying and rip off my mask because I am sure as hell wasn’t getting proposed to in that thing! As we start walking towards everyone, our song, You Make It Easy by Jason Aldean starts blasting on a speaker. He walks me into a circle of what I know now is 500 white stems rose, 5,000 white rose petals, and teacup candles.
The next thing I know I hear my dad call Nick’s name and I see him throw the ring box to Nick, who catches it in a half kneel (yes my heart did in fact drop). He got down on one knee, said the most beautiful words to me, and asked me to spend the rest of his life with him. I yanked him up from his knees and gave him the biggest hug (totally forgetting about the ring, to be honest). He picked me up and spun me around while our family threw (even more) white rose petals over our heads. To say the moment was magical would be the understatement of the century. Afterward, all 20+ of us when to Patrizia’s in Williamsburg, an Italian place that he rented out for us to all have dinner together and celebrate.
