Stephanie

Austin and I met four years ago at my church when he and his family were visiting. We happened to sit in the same row and we kept catching each others eye. After the service was over, he came up to me and introduced himself. Although we were young, I knew there was something very different about this boy. Very soon after meeting, we went on what we later found out was both of our first dates. (How cute is that?! Marrying our very first dates!) A few years later we reconnected and went on our second date. Although he planned on leaving for the Navy very soon, he asked me to be his girlfriend that same night, September 5th 2008. We almost instantly fell head-over-heels in love with each other and have been inseparable ever since. It did not take long for both of us to know that we were each others soul-mates for life. Austin came home from the Navy for Thanksgiving weekend this year and as expected, our first priority was finally spending time together. Friday morning he showed up at my house to pick me up with beautiful red roses and would not tell me where we were going. I had no idea where we were going or what we were going to be doing. As we were driving down the highway, I saw a billboard for 'Christmas at Stone Mountain' and said "Wow, i really don't want to go to that." Austin looked over at me with that 'are you serious?' face. I felt so bad and tried to convince him that i wanted to go there with him but he said "No, we're not doing that now." So we ended up going out to eat at McCormick & Shmick's and then headed into Atlanta. We walked around Centennial Olympic Park for a long time on the most beautiful day and decided to go to the Georgia Aquarium. We walked all around the aquarium for a couple hours and saw everything there was to see. We were about to leave when he pulled my hand and said, "Come with me" and started walking towards several closed doors. I told Austin not to go through them because they were closed for a reason and he continued to insist on going into this room. The room ended up being this beautiful grand ballroom with its own private view of the largest exhibit in the aquarium. We were standing next to the window talking about how beautiful it was and he looked at me and got down on one knee. I couldn't stop smiling the entire time he was talking to me and then finally he asked, "Stephanie, Will You Marry Me?" and obviously, i said "YES!" We ended it with a big kiss and headed off to tell everyone. It was perfect.