Chellie and John

Our engagement pictures (all the ones where I'm wearing the tan jacket) were taken by our wedding photographer: Rachel Terry of Stellar Photography in Grand County Colorado. The picture of us at the top of Pikes Peak (right after the proposal) was taken by some stranger :) LOL

John & I met on myspace (yep, that's right) LOL. I was moving from Colorado Springs out to Grand Junction, CO for an internship & was looking for people who knew the area so I could make friends & get some advice on what neighborhoods to avoid living in. John and I emailed & IM'ed for a few weeks and then he drove out to Colorado Springs (about a 5 hour drive) to meet me. We went on our first date at a pizza place & then went to see a movie. He drove us to the movie theater but since we were in my hometown I was giving him directions. I was telling him he needed to turn left & he said "nah, I'll go up one more stoplight"..well sure enough he realized he needed to have turned where I told him to and said "you were ABSOLUTELY right". I joke that that moment was when I knew he was the one for me. He says he knew I was the one during one of our long roadtrips. There is something about being able to be in a car with someone for hours on end & not get sick of one another or get irritable.
After about a year & a half of dating we started talking about getting married. We went & shopped for rings & I had a hard time finding something that I liked. Being a plus sized girl I have large fingers & the rings that I'd been trying on all seemed too "dainty" for my larger fingers...but I finally found a ring that I loved (a center stone with a halo of smaller diamonds around it which added to the size of the ring (making it look more substantial on my finger)... w/o adding significantly to the price of the ring b/c we could still go with a smaller/affordable diamond. After our shopping trip, I didn't know when it was going to happen & it seemed like forever (but it was really only a couple of months)... He proposed to me at the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs & after the proposal we went & had lunch at the same pizza parlor that we went on our first date. He did good :)

We've been engaged for just over 1 year and we're planning a small wedding at a ranch in the Rocky Mountains at the end of September.