“Jaclyn and I had been discussing getting married for a little while. But we had wanted to focus on setting ourselves up a bit before we tried to have a wedding. The summer we got engaged, I just decided that I wanted to make it happen. So I went to a local jewelry shop and asked them if they could make a ring based on the style Jaclyn had previously shown me. Conveniently, the ring ended up being ready the same week Jaclyn had gotten me tickets to Jazz Fest in Ottawa. I brought the ring with me. When we went to Ottawa, and I told Jaclyn I thought it would be nice if we went downtown for dinner before the concerts.

The concerts were to be held at City Hall, so I parked the car a few blocks away in front of our old apartment on Waverley. Then we went for dinner at our old date spot, The Lieutenant’s Pump. After dinner, I told her I wanted to wander down to the Somerset bridge, where we had previously hung a lock on the bridge for our first anniversary. And I wanted to see if we could find our lock. From there, I told her I had heard they had done some renovations to the building the student newspaper we both worked at was housed and that I wanted to go see what had changed.

Luckily, that was all a set up and the building looked exactly as it had when the two of us had worked there. As we stood on the front steps of building where we had first met years ago, I fumbled around a bit. I was building up my nerve before I finally asked her if she would marry me. Spoiler, she said yes.”