When Brian had told me he was getting ready to propose to Ellen, I nearly fell off my seat. For the longest time, I told my good friend, Ellen, that Brian was the one. It was only a matter of time when he would propose. And he finally did!

The morning of the proposal at the Deerhill Inn, my hands were clammy and sweaty. Gross, I know. But I was nervous. I’ve known of this secret proposal for more than 2 months and hid it from my friend. There were times I was grateful our conversations were behind a computer because I knew one look at my cheesy smile would have given me away.

I asked Ellen, who is a phenomenal writer, to send me a short story about her and Brian’s love story. As a witness of most of her relationships, I knew this one was a keeper from the beginning…

” Brian and I were brought together many years ago through my best friend who attended school with him. A friendship developed and as it grew, the lessons began. First we learned to trust each other in a way that is sometimes trivial when involving the opposite sex. With him, it always felt instinctual. When a brief romance came into play, we learned that timing was crucial, and because it wasn’t yet the right time for our next step, we parted ways. And perhaps most important of all, we learned that in all our years of friendship, we weren’t alone. God had a master plan that would both surprise and fulfill us in a way we had not yet known was possible. Our romance began to bud two and half years ago when we experimented with the idea of us again. Yet it only truly bloomed a year and a half ago when we collectively realized how important we were to each other and how neither of us had ever been in a dynamic that felt quite this good and natural. I prayed for Brian and I a lot throughout our relationship, asking God to bless our journey and lead us to the right path, and I’ll continue to this through the course of our lives. He is the love of my life, and we cannot wait to say our “I do’s” and live out the journey that God had planned for us all along.”