We met in October 2025 at a young adults retreat in The Woodlands, introduced by a mutual friend. The funny part is that we had been going to the same church all along. Francesca worked in the church coffee shop and later served in the kids' ministry upstairs, and Simon somehow never noticed her.
Over the next three months we kept seeing each other at our church's weekly young adults service. At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, Simon asked Francesca to be his girlfriend, and on January 1st we went on our first date.
The proposal
On July 3, 2026, Francesca was on a girls' trip in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her friend Deborah. We had picked out the ring together, and she thought it wouldn't be ready until the end of July. Simon traveled to Tulsa in secret, leaving his phone and laptop at home, with help from the same friend who first introduced us.
Francesca is almost impossible to surprise. An hour before she arrived, Simon's Apple Watch gave him away. She still had no idea what was waiting in the Philbrook Museum gardens, where Simon got down on one knee.
Francesca let Simon choose the wedding date. He picked the 8th, his favorite number.