Our story began at the very glamorous hour of 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning at the McDonald’s on Seneca; because nothing says “romance” like fluorescent lighting and hot black coffee. After our plans for a baseball game fell apart the night before, we decided that meeting before sunrise for breakfast was a perfectly normal alternative.

We both showed up with absolutely no intention of impressing each other. Makeup? No. Fancy outfits? Also no. But we did accidentally match our coffee orders - black, hot, and ordered by two people who definitely should have still been asleep. We grabbed our cups and wandered down Douglas Street, discovering that conversation came so easily it almost made us forget how early it was.

That first breakfast turned into a pattern. For the next month, we kept meeting at 6:30 a.m., convincing ourselves that waking up before the birds was “kind of our thing.” Between the laughter, the half-awake honesty, and the shared appreciation for caffeine, we quickly realized we had something special - or at least something worth losing sleep over.

We became engaged 11 months later, and by then the decision felt simple. Saying “yes” to spending our lives together was just as easy as saying “yes” to that second early breakfast date, this time fully awake, but just as certain.