Our First Date:

It was warm summer day when the bumble dating app on my phone rumbled with delight at a new match. As I pulled up my phone to see I had a new match I opened bumble to see the bright shining smile that I unknowingly would come to love…Jess. Jess was a bright smiled petite little 24 year old cutie.

You never know who you’re going to match with online dating and that was a fact with Jess. The people you meet ranging from all sorts great to all sorts of terrible, sometimes it felt like I worked for waste management…and I had no idea where jess fit in that spectrum. It was the year 2020 and the Covid lockdowns had just started to be released business by business. Things would open and then close again based on what the news was reporting. There weren’t a ton of things to do, but I was determined to live life. I asked Jess to have some drinks with me at my apartments pool. When I first set eyes on Jess I was blown away. Her pure happiness and beautiful smile could lift the spirits of even the most sullen. She had just cut half her hair off and man did it do the trick. She. Was. Cute. In fact she was even cuter than her photos…which never happens!

From that moment and beyond I knew Jess was my soul mate.

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Getting Engaged:

If you know me, I love surprises, and Jess is really hard to surprise. A big part about me and my personality is that almost everything I put my mind to I am able to accomplish. That is exactly what I did in an effort to give Jess the perfect engagement, from the ring to the surprise. It was in July that I set the date for our engagement to be on a new year’s trip to the Swiss Alps with our closest friends. Jess and her best friend and maid of honor, Ali, went to Jess’ long time friend Lance Shaprio of Shapiro Diamonds in Dallas. They sat down in Lance’s office and evaluated every aspect of the engagement ring from the diamond to the setting. My goal was to get a sense of what Jess wanted and then to design the perfect engagement ring for her. Jess came home that day beaming with excitement and happiness. I thought to myself. “How am I going to surprise Jess, she already knows that I’m going to buy the ring”.

From that day forward I set out on the largest ”fake-out” campaign of my life. For weeks, I would leave my phone at my office and go to Lance’s office for design revisions, to look at diamond certifications and countless other aspects of creating the perfect engagement ring. As time went on; I would drop subtle hints to Jess of how I wanted to get more serious about purchasing the ring but I needed to wait. I needed to wait “for the right time” or “to make more money” or I would simply say “lets shop around”. All while is was actively designing Jess’ engagement ring. By the time December rolled around, I finally was able to pick up the finished ring. I was in awe; Lance had done an incredible job and it looked even better than the renderings! Now I just had to set up the perfect surprise in Switzerland.

On the plane to Europe, I begrudgingly told Jess “Okay, lets get serious about getting a ring, I’m going to receive a big check early next year, can you make an appointment with Lance for early January when we get back from Switzerland”.

For over a month I had to hide the most exciting gift of my life from my best friend! It was so hard but I was committed. In fact, right before we left for Europe, I gave Jared, my best man, the ring to smuggle into Switzerland which admittedly was fairly scary… what if the ring got confiscated by customs. For The entire trip until about 30 seconds before popping the question, I never had nor even saw the engagement ring. I decided on the engagement location a day earlier at a semi mountain peak across the street from a bar. When Jared and I had visited the bar, it was secluded and quiet…the perfect spot.

I told everyone that we were going to take pictures with a photographer and to dress nice. These will be our group photos to post on social media for the trip so Jess would have no reason to suspect anything else. We all show up at the semi peak, dressed up and ready for what was to come. Jess still has no idea, my heart was pumping out of my chest and the moment I stepped outside the cab, I realized, holy shit, this is catastrophe! The bar is packed with a line out the front door! Across the street where I’m going to get on one knee is full of tables! And people are sitting at those tables! And to top it all off, we have 15 minutes max until the sun will go behind the mountain and our perfect lighting would be gone.

To this day, I don’t know how we did it but all of us: myself, Jared, Leigh, Nathan, Callie, Tristan and Ali moved across the street like an infantry platoon charging the enemy trenches, systematically eradicating every single person occupying the area. Jess later said, “I sat there and it seemed like everyone had a job except me”. At this point Jess still has no idea what is to happen. We all lined up and took filler photos until the sun was just perfectly peaking behind the background mountain peak. And then I got on one knee chocking back tears trying to make a decent speech eek out of my suddenly strangled throat.

I won’t lie, although I knew what Jess would say when I asked her. I was however afraid that I was going to somehow fumble this experience for her. Luckily every single piece of the engagement and trip fell into place without a single hitch. Jess was glowing with excitement, which at the end of the day, was all I needed.

Things to Do

The French Room

Terry Black's Barbecue