It all started in the boom boom room at rounders.

That’s right – you read that correctly. The kind of place where nobody expected anything serious to happen. But before that makes sense, we need to go back a bit.

Our friends Emily Hayden and Will McCann, both now standing beside us in our bridal party, were the ones who started it all. Emily knew Collin long before I did. She and Will had already been together by the time Collin and I entered the picture. Emily isn’t just one of my best friends. In Tri Delta at the University of Alabama, she was my big — the person who knew me well enough to believe she could play matchmaker and potentially get it right.

From what I’ve been told, Collin was looking for a date to the Alpha Tau Omega Foam Party. More specifically, he wanted one of Emily’s brunette friends. Thankfully, I fit the description. And just like that, without either of us realizing it, a simple date to a foam party became the beginning of everything.

Emily picked me up from my sophomore-year house before the pregame, and somewhere between climbing into her car and pulling up to the party, I realized Collin and I practically lived next door to each other. It was like God had been quietly placing us in each other’s lives long before we officially met.

I remember standing nervously on the back patio of his house, trying to act far calmer than I felt. I kept glancing toward the door, waiting for my date to appear.

Then he walked out.

And I swear, I remember that moment like it happened yesterday. I saw him and immediately thought he was the cutest person I had ever seen. But what surprised me most wasn’t how handsome he was. It was how easy everything felt after that. He was kind, easy to talk to and funny. The kind of person who made you feel comfortable within minutes. That combination is rare to find.

By the time the foam party was over, it felt less like meeting someone new and more like reconnecting with someone I had known forever. To this day, it remains one of the most fun date parties I’ve ever been to — though looking back now, I think that had a lot less to do with the party itself and everything to do with him.

Not long after the ATO party, I invited him to Tri Delta’s Southbound party — a theme party. Truly a great opportunity to make a second impression. I showed up with beer cans woven into my hair, fully committed to the bit, and somehow, he still stayed beside me all night. Most people would probably reconsider their choices at that point, but not Collin. If anything, he seemed even more entertained. That was one of the first things I loved about him: he never made me feel like I had to be anything other than exactly who I was. Loud, ridiculous, overdressed, underdressed, slightly chaotic — it didn’t matter. He accepted all of it.

After that came our first real date. No costumes, no foam machines, no crowded college party. Just the two of us at Avenue Pub in Tuscaloosa. And it was effortless. The conversation never stalled, time moved too quickly, and when we left, I was hoping for another excuse to see him again. Somewhere between that date and all the moments that followed, our story quietly began writing itself.

We spent the next few years soaking up every part of life at the University of Alabama together — fraternity and sorority date parties, late nights with friends, and Saturdays spent cheering on the Tide. Roll Tide!

While I finished my senior year, Collin stayed at Alabama to complete his master’s degree in business. Even then, we were building separate futures while building one together at the same time.

After graduation, life took us in different directions for a while. I moved to Nashville to pursue my master’s degree in applied behavior analysis at Vanderbilt University, while Collin began his career as a sales engineer at Keyence, spending his days driving across Alabama and Mississippi.

For two years, we were four hours apart. Long distance wasn’t easy. There were goodbye hugs that lasted long, late-night phone calls after exhausting days, and countless drives back and forth just to get a weekend together. But the distance never weakened us. If anything, it made us stronger.

We learned how to choose each other intentionally. How to communicate better. How to support one another even from miles away. And most importantly, we both grew deeper in our relationship with Jesus, who has always remained the center of our relationship and the foundation beneath everything else.

Even with busy schedules and different cities, we found ways to build a life full of memories together. Throughout the four years of dating, we traveled to Connecticut, New York City, Rhode Island, Boston, Vermont, New Orleans, Chicago, countless trips between Nashville and Alabama, and vacations along 30A in Florida. No matter where we went, being with Collin made every place feel exciting. He has this way of turning ordinary moments into adventures, and to this day, there’s still no one I’d rather travel through life with.

Then came April 30, 2026.

On a beautiful evening in Rosemary Beach along 30A, the man of my dreams asked me to marry him. It was perfect.

It was the kind of moment you replay in your mind over and over because it somehow felt both completely surreal and exactly right at the same time. God held back the rain just long enough for us, the ocean breeze drifting softly through the air and for a little while, standing together on Rosemary Beach, it felt like the entire world had gone still around us.

Afterward, we celebrated with a stay at The Pearl Hotel and an unforgettable dinner at Havana Beach Bar & Grill, still floating through the happiness of what had just happened.

We still have a lifetime ahead of us — more adventures, more travels, more Alabama football Saturdays, more late-night conversations, more memories we haven’t even imagined yet. And now, we get to begin the next chapter together.

We cannot wait for our wedding day to become another beautiful memory in the story Jesus has so graciously written for us, and we cannot wait to celebrate this special day with all of our favorite people!