Engaged: Cory and Hannah (Part 1)

Dear World: Cory and Hannah are in love. Fully, truly, unabashedly. And not only are they in love, but their love simply glows. Cory can’t take his eyes off Hannah, he just can’t.  And the way he looks at her  and the way she smiles at him makes me want to melt into a little puddle of mushy gushy loviedoviness … or maybe just celebrate their love from a rooftop for the whole world to see (or maybe I’ll just blog about it).

I loved hearing them tell their story…her Dad’s last-minute pre-college advice to stay away from boys…their first meeting a week later…the first date that evening…and their giggles as they took turns telling me bits and pieces of their story.  But, then, wanna know what really got me and knocked my socks off and made me reach for the kleenex? Going back through all the pictures I took and reliving the time I spent watching them love each other.  Its the little things, the almost intangible moments, the cuteness I saw over and over and over again as I scrolled through a minute-by-minute of our date-with-pictures. Yeah, I cried. So much beauty does that to me.  So there.

This park is where Cory proposed; they even reenacted the event. But, get this: Hannah’s entire family was in on the proposal. She and her mom were on their way to a “tupperware party” (the fake invitation was on the fridge when Hannah arrived home for Christmas break) when they made a detour by the park, under the guise that it was a shortcut.  When they drove past and saw the candlelit gazebo ringed by luminaries, Hannah’s mom wondered – out loud – if that was Cory. The clueless girlfriend insisted it wasn’t…multiple times … before she finally went down to see for herself.  And there he was: her man and a ring surrounded by a sea of candlelight. Now that’s romance.