Once upon a summer, our story began with a message.

​

It may not have been the traditional beginning to a love story, but it was ours.

​

We met on Bumble in the summer of 2024. On the very morning Colin and I would connect for the first time, I had decided that I was going to delete my Bumble profile. My luck on the app hadn't exactly been promising, and I had begun to wonder if perhaps finding my person through online dating simply wasn't meant for me. I fully intended to delete the app that morning and move on.

 

But work had been especially busy that day, and somehow, I never got around to it.

 

And then, later that afternoon, Colin appeared in my inbox.

 

He had just one free message left on Bumble to send. Of all the possibilities before him, he chose to use his last message on me.

 

One little message.

​

One match.

 

One decision I almost never had the chance to receive.

 

And, as fate would have it, the beginning of our forever.

 

Sometimes we wonder what might have happened if I had deleted Bumble that morning. Would we ever have met? Would our paths have crossed another way? We may never know.

​

But perhaps some things are simply not meant to be missed.

For our first date, we made plans to meet at Kimball Farm in Westford, MA, for mini golf and ice cream. It sounded like the perfect summer afternoon.. until we realized it was nearly 90 degrees outside.

 

And Colin showed up wearing jeans.

 

To this day, we still laugh about it.

Concerned that our first date might end with Colin suffering from heat stroke, we decided that mini golf could wait for another day. Instead, we got ice cream, found a picnic table, and started talking.

 

And talking.

​

And talking.

 

What was supposed to be a simple first date somehow turned into more than six hours together. We lost track of time, completely caught up in conversation, laughter, and getting to know one another. Neither of us seemed to be in much of a hurry to leave.

Looking back, perhaps that was our first little sign that we had found something special.

 

The rest of that summer was filled with dates, adventures, long conversations, and countless little moments that brought us closer. Somewhere along the way, what started as a Bumble match became a friendship, then a love, and eventually the feeling that we had found our person.

In November 2025, we took another step in our story when I moved into Colin’s home. We began building a life together - sharing our days, creating our home, laughing over the little things, and discovering that the ordinary moments can become some of the most beautiful ones when you get to spend them with the person you love.

Then came April 2026.

 

Colin brought me to Old North Bridge in Concord, MA - a place that had already become a special part of our story. During that first summer we spent together, we had gone on so many dates there and created some of our favorite early memories.

 

This time, we returned as something more.

 

We returned as two people who had already built a life together.

 

And there, in a place that had been part of our beginning, Colin asked me to spend the rest of my life with him.

​

I said yes.

It felt a little like the ending of a fairytale - the kind where all of the little moments that came before suddenly make sense. All the things that happened in our lives before. How it didn't work out with anyone else before eachother. The morning I almost deleted Bumble. The message Colin almost didn’t send. The ninety-degree day. The jeans. The ice cream. The six hours at a picnic table. The countless dates. The home we built together.

 

Every little moment had somehow led us there.

 

Maybe it was luck.

 

Maybe it was fate.

 

Or maybe some love stories are simply meant to be.

Whatever brought us together, we know one thing for certain:

 

Our story began with one little message, but it was almost a story that never happened at all.

 

And now, we can’t wait to turn the page and begin our next chapter—

 

as husband and wife.