Engagement

NYSSA + Jake

Our love story, from Jake’s perspective:

Our story is definitely an interesting one (atleast to me!). Nyssa and I actually met years ago in middle school. Specifically 7th grade science. I had moved to Texas from Michigan a couple years prior and she moved to North Texas from South Texas (which if you don't know, is still a 12 hour distance ). Nyssa was an early crush of mine, leading to one of my friends pulling a prank on me and writing on her Facebook wall that I thought she was "hot". Nyssa, did not like this, and confronted me the next day saying "My mom monitors my Facebook page". That was the last time I spoke to Nyssa until high school, purely out of embarrassment. 

Life happened and Nyssa and I went on to live our own lives through high school and college (unknown to us, we attended the same university). We were friends on Instagram though and in 2022 I was stationed in Georgia. She had planned a trip to visit Atlanta with one of her long time friends and posted it on her story, I saw this and wanted to reach out and see if she would be interested in meeting up. But we hadn't spoken in a decade and I was nervous. One of my best friends was in town visiting and we went out for some drinks that night, he thought it would be a great idea if he messaged her from my phone. Nyssa, once again, responded with the sweetest rejection, saying her friend knew the area and she didn't want to meet up. Once again mortified, I decided 2 rejections might be enough. It wasn't until 2 months later, in April 2022 where Nyssa would reach back out to me, asking how the weather was in Atlanta...she of course, has a weather app, so I regained some of the confidence to try and meet up with her. Ultimately, I was given the opportunity to pick her up from the airport and we spent the entire day walking around downtown Atlanta in circles, catching up and getting to know the people we are today. 

From that moment, we never stopped talking, and even though I was active duty, we planned trips to see eachother several times a month. I got reassigned to a unit in Maryland, and we spent the next 2 years dating long distance. It was hard at times, but we looked at it as an opportunity to see all the places we wanted to visit together. We traveled to several of our bucket list destinations and when the day finally came for me to get out of the military, I moved back to North Texas. 

I began designing the ring with Susie just before I returned to Texas, and I couldn't be happier with the help y'all provided. Every meeting we had helped me understand exactly what I wanted to do for Nyssa and after months of waiting, I was ecstatic to receive the ring in late summer of 2024. 

Planning the proposal took months, I had an incredibly hard time determining how I could keep it a secret from my detective of a fiancée. Ultimately, I decided to do it at a place of new beginnings for us. We had closed on a home in August of 2024, and it couldn't be anymore perfect. Nyssa had decorated the house beautifully for the holidays and I took advantage of everything that meant to her and I. I proposed in front of the tree in our new living room on December 11th 2024. And she said yes!

Hawai'i was an incredibly timed vacation that allowed us to spend time in a beautiful location engaged. It worked out perfectly for us to get engagement photos and enjoy alone time together before Christmas.