My fiancé Jason and I met in the summer of 2006 when he came to work as a chef in the restaurant I was bartending at. We were both fairly shy and throughout that summer there were eye games at work and times when Jason would show up certain places just because he knew I would be there. As summer neared a close it wasn’t until a work colleague came to the bar one day to get the kitchen beverages that I knew I had a chance with Jason. She told me she had asked Jason what he wanted from the bar and he had replied `the bartender`.

I went flush immediately and it wasn’t long before everyone was trying to put us together. For Thanksgiving a work friend invited myself and the kitchen staff over since it is hard for people in the hospitality industry to get home to family for a turkey dinner. When Jason came over that evening he had cut both his middle fingers at work, in addition to a having a very large burn on one of his hands and he was lacking one eyebrow (please don’t ask). Despite all this, by the end of the night with the most butterflies I have ever felt in my stomach I was entering my phone number into his phone, because, well honestly his hands were not very functional at the time. One particular evening stands out for me when Jason dropped me off at home. He turned and looked at me for just a moment, and I truly felt a connection.

It was like I understood him completely and I felt intensely excited, yet calm all at the same time. I knew then that I loved him. Over the next five years I finished school and we moved from Southern Ontario out to Vancouver Island where we expanded our careers and had some of the best experiences of our lives. Though everyone always teased us about when we were going to get married it wasn’t until we were ready to move back home to Ontario that Jason proposed. It was a very rainy day as most are on the west coast and Jason planned an evening that I thought was with friends but turned into a surprise blindfolding, concluding with a hotel suite, champagne, flowers, chocolates, and a man standing before me trying to say the most important words of his life! When he told me he loved me, I put my hand on his arm and felt him trembling. I smiled so wide, looked him in the eyes and said yes!