Hello friends and family,

It’s Brett here. I procrastinated on writing “Our Story” for the website, like the way I handled asking Anna to marry me.

Our story started at Aquinas College. Through mutual friends we started seeing each other around campus and taking notice of each other. I was a Junior going for a business degree and spent most of my time hanging out with friends to avoid the library. Anna was a Sophomore Nursing student, who was rarely seen outside of the library. Early on into us talking, I somehow convinced her to leave the books at home one night to see a Quinn XCII (now our favorite artist) concert with our friends. I wouldn’t have called it a date, but she kept talking to me afterward. We started dating just a few weeks after the concert, which was just in time for finals week. No one saw me outside of the library for the rest of the semester.

Long-distance is a good way to describe a lot of our relationship. During the school year we could see each other all the time, but Anna moved back to Farmington Hills after she graduated college. We spent a lot of time on beautiful I-96, driving back and forth to see each other for a day at a time. At the beginning of COVID, Anna was a nurse on one of the most impacted floors in Detroit. This was probably the hardest part during our long-distance time because we had to quarantine from each other.

2020 ended and she moved over to Grand Rapids, only about a ten-minute drive away! We were now able to spend so much more time doing what we love, and with each other. Trying breweries, going on breakfast dates, and putting on sunscreen so we could hang out on the boat.

In 2021 I had finally hung around enough to get invited on the Barron family vacation to Utah and Colorado. Conveniently, Anna’s ring arrived about a week before our flight took off. I did not have a plan for how to ask her to marry me, but my dad said I’d be a clown not to ask her out there. I packed the ring in the very bottom of my backpack just in case the opportunity to ask came up.

The time arrived on the morning of Memorial Day at Canyonlands National Park. She evaded my first attempt by not climbing to the top of a very steep Butte with me. Fair enough. So, we went to another Butte! Anna stayed behind to take a picture which gave me about 30 seconds to get the ring from the bottom of the backpack and hand a phone to her unsuspecting parents to take a picture of the proposal. She said yes as the sun had just risen over the canyons!

Flash forward and we are coming up quickly on the wedding day. I cannot wait to start the rest of my life with Anna. She is perfect, and more than I deserve. We are so excited to celebrate with everyone on our big day together!