We knew each other from church for about two years, in that way where you say hi every Sunday and never once have a real conversation. Then a little friend group formed around Maria's friend Abby Duty (shoutout, Abby), and right around then Joe bought a Miata, which seats exactly two people and loses its roof on nice days. Joe insists Maria only started hanging out with him for the car, which honestly works out fine, because he bought the car to attract girls. Abby started getting mysteriously busy, the two of us started taking long drives with the top down, and by the end of all those back roads and sunsets neither of us was fooling anybody. Our friend Caleb Nickens was already telling people we were dating, which we both firmly denied. Looking back, who's to say 🤷

If you ask Joe, he knew pretty early. If you ask Maria, she felt absolutely nothing, which is the story she kept telling until Ms. Amy, our pastor's wife, sat her down and told her to stop lying to herself. So we finally said it out loud, in the Miata of course, and started planning our first date.

The first date was exciting, except for the fact that it never happened. Maria's best friend Moriah reminded her that she'd promised God she was staying single that summer to focus on her Praying Pelican mission trips, so we canceled the date and made a very serious agreement to stop texting and FaceTiming so much. We kept that agreement for approximately zero days, including the ones when she was away on her trips.

When she came home for a week between trips, Maria called a coffee shop meeting and announced that we were going completely silent for three weeks. It turned into almost six, and by the time she was home for good she'd decided she wasn't interested anymore, so we went our separate ways. Joe spent those weeks strangely confident that she'd come back around. She did, eventually, on exactly her own schedule, and yes, she made us put that part in.

A month or so later the conversation crept back in, a little at a time, until we had to decide whether we were actually doing this. Maria asked for three weeks to pray about it, and by the end of week two we were talking as much as we ever had, so the answer wasn't exactly a mystery. Joe asked, we went out two days later, and the first two dates, which he planned himself and will describe to anyone who asks as legendary, genuinely were.

Date number two was Holland. We wandered downtown and found a cute little shop called Jean Marie's, and walked out with matching WWJD bracelets in beige, which is Maria's favorite color. Joe's official plan was to wait until date three to ask her to be his girlfriend, but between the matching bracelets and the romantic sunset-on-the-beach finale he'd planned (incredible date planning, by the way), he knew he had to ask that night. Maria was expecting a date-three question too, but things were going so perfectly that she'd started hoping he would just go ahead and ask.

So we made it official that night, sitting in the bed of an F-150 Lightning on the beach, waiting on that famous romantic sunset, which the clouds mostly swallowed. What we got instead was orange and red glowing through them, which was honestly its own kind of pretty, and Holland has been our place ever since.

So this spring, with some undercover help from Joe's sister Kristen and, of course, Moriah, the three of them headed to Holland for what Maria thought was just another one of our beach days. Joe had an elaborate excuse for staying behind: he had to work, because his test had caught on fire 🔥 (shoutout to his boss Wesley for helping sell that one). He even left his phone at work so it would look like he was still there. It almost worked, but a Joe who doesn't answer texts is a suspicious thing, and Maria got suspicious enough to figure the whole thing out, and yes, she has proof.

Meanwhile the real plan was waiting back at our beach, in the same truck from date number two, plus a ring with a tulip setting, because the tulip is the flower of Holland. Suspicious or not, Maria still says it was absolutely perfect.

She said yes, and the rest is history, also known as wedding planning.