How We Met

After a couple of fleeting encounters celebrating with mutual friends, and those same friends' ongoing attempt at a "set-up", Aric finally worked up the courage to ask his friend Mike for Becky's phone number. On a cold, rainy January night in 2020, we revelled in our first date, eating, drinking, and merrily talking until the restaurant closed. Under Becky's umbrella on the corner of Lawrence and Leavitt, we bid our farewells and with an innocent kiss goodnight changed both of our lives forever.

Our Life Together

For the last three years, along with our little angel of a kitten Binx, we have made our home together in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago. When we don't stay in, with Aric cooking, Becky working on her newest design project, or just relaxing and reading with a record playing in the background, we're always getting up to something around town. You might find us walking through the park, riding our bikes on the 606 trail, or out and about at one of our most-loved spots enjoying a nice dinner, catching up with friends, or adding another strip to our photo booth picture collection. But with our shared affection for live music, hands down our favorite way to spend an evening would have to be seeing yet another concert. We both hold the Windy City and all it has to offer near and dear to our hearts, however, we still try to get away as often as possible to explore the rest of the world. Sometimes that's getting rained out of our tent backpacking in the Smokies, unwinding on a beach in the Caribbean, or, most recently, catching a total solar eclipse in Texas. All of this made infinitely more special and precious sharing it by each other's side.

The Proposal

For our fourth anniversary, we ventured to Puerto Rico to celebrate with some island vibes, a little sun in our hair and sand in our toes. The escape from the Chicago winter didn't hurt either. The first few days saw us spend a couple of nights in San Juan, have an exquisite anniversary dinner, do some more local touring, and make a poorly veiled attempt at location scouting the night before the big day. Then, the morning of January 12th, as the sun broke over the peaks, we set out from our literal tree house overlooking the park into the rainforest of El Yunque. A short hike up found us, as luck would have it, completely alone, not another soul in sight. In the middle of Juan Diego Falls, tongue-tied with nerves, Aric took a knee amongst the rocks in the cool mountain water and managed to spit out, barely audible over the cascade, "Will you marry me?" I think you know by now what Becky said back.