They met while playing together on a work softball team. He was pitching; she was playing 1st base. The whole team would go out for drinks afterwards and it always somehow ended up being just the two of them left at the end. They were very good friends, played tennis together, and hung out a lot. To pinpoint when things changed was so difficult that they both have different stories!

He says he thinks it was at Famous Dave’s two summers ago when it was “Dave’s Day” where anyone named Dave gets to eat free. He was feeling a little guilty that their first date was at a BBQ place. She pinpoints the first date (the one “where I got butterflies and realized this was something more than a casual hang out”) as a night sometime in August of that summer. She went over to his place and they played Scrabble. They ended up going for a long walk around downtown Cedar Falls and waiting for the pizza-by-the-slice to open up at 10 PM.

For both of them, the realization the other was their “one” came at the same time. It was just a couple of months later. Dave picked Jessica up in the middle of the night to take her to the hospital for what ended up being a ruptured appendix and emergency surgery. “He was by my side the entire time and slept in the hospital chair the night I was admitted.” Dave said, “I had a good feeling she was the one early on. Over time I wanted to spend more and more time with her and never wanted to leave her place or her to leave mine. When she had her appendix removed, I took her to the hospital and stayed with her and woke up to her family coming into the room at 4:30 AM. They didn’t know me or that I existed yet. I think I knew then…when I wanted to stay by her side and not get out of the way.”

He proposed earlier this year while they were in Germany. “It was pouring rain as bad as I’ve ever seen almost every second of every day on our trip. I had the ring on me the whole time. I had planned to do it on a few occasions, but the timing wasn’t working. She kept going to sleep right before I was planning on proposing.” (She blames it on the wine.) He proposed on the last night of their trip, telling her what an amazing time it had been together and that he hoped they would have many more adventures. Then he asked her to spend forever with him.

Jessica has the most adorable laugh and, if anyone

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