Riley and JB

How We Met

I was the president of the finance organization at Kansas State University and I organized to have a few alumni that work at Deloitte Consulting teach us a financial modeling workshop. JB was one of the alumni that came to teach and also recruit undergraduates to work for Deloitte. I was very intrigued by him but had to keep it professional because I really wanted an offer from Deloitte. Once I got the offer, JB was assigned to me to make sure I sign the offer. That meant several phone calls, growing our chemistry more and more. Once I signed the offer I told JB “now that I signed with Deloitte, maybe I can move from your work phone to your personal phone”. This was a bold move and I was nervous how he would take it but we seemed to be hitting it off. After sending that message I never heard a response back and I was MORTIFIED. A few months later JB came back to Kstate for another finance event and asked me to get drinks after. I decided to give it one more shot and be bold again and say “I don’t know… I mean I’m not even in your personal phone”. He then responds with surprise and says… “I texted you a few months back and you never replied”. He showed me the text and he had switched 2 of my numbers. So turns out we were both mortified that we had been rejected and both decided to be bold one last time. Once we both realized we were into each other we fell in love hard and fast.

How They Asked

JB and I had been dating for almost 4 years and had been ring-shopping/talking about getting engaged for quite a while so I was getting anxious, to say the least.

On Christmas, JB gave me a new gym bag (because I had been stealing his) and told me to look inside. Inside each pocket was a small gift leading to the final gift of tickets to Cancun Mexico. JB told me that he had planned a trip for us to stay at Rosewood Mayakoba for the weekend in March. Rosewood is a beautiful beachfront resort on the lagoon that was a dream of ours to go to.

After several attempts to figure out what our itinerary was, I decided to give up and go with the flow (as much as a type-A person can). On Friday he had signed us up for a spa day and told me he had something special planned at night. I got ready for the night and JB asked me to sit outside on our patio by our private dock for a drink. While sitting out there I was shocked to see a boat pull up to our dock, playing our favorite music, and stocked with my favorite wine. We went on a private boat tour that ended at another private dock with someone waiting there to greet us.

They walked us to this beautiful bonfire and dinner set up on the beach. As soon as we arrive our favorite song started to play and JB asked me to dance. (JB does not dance so I was overwhelmed with emotions by this point) We dance and at the end of the song JB goes into this beautiful speech and asks me to marry him.

I start balling (not cute crying, loud ugly crying) and say yes. As soon as I do, photographers jump out of the bushes and snap pictures of us. We take a few more pictures then celebrate with champagne and dinner on the beach. A mariachi band came and played romantic music for us as we enjoyed our last bites.

As soon as we got to the room and opened the door I saw tons of balloons, flowers, and chocolate. I was on cloud nine, but to top it off, above our bed was a printed out timeline of our relationship and the very last picture was a picture of him proposing just 1 hour earlier.