Can two people connect instantly while meeting on a dating app?
Raul and Christine did just that. After finding each other’s dating app profiles and exchanging their first few messages, they could feel the sparks flying. They kept texting each other for nearly 2 weeks before finally talking by phone and planning to meet.
Their first date
After that first phone conversation, Raul and Christine couldn’t wait to see each other. They had planned a special Saturday night first date, but they instead got together the previous Tuesday night at a casual barbecue restaurant. They were smitten with each other at first glance: Christine saw Raul as “so tall and so handsome,” while Raul saw Christine as “even prettier in person” compared with her dating app profile photo. And they continued to click that night, just as they had while texting. “There were no awkward moments,” Raul recalls. “The conversation flowed like we had known each other for months.”
From that first date, Raul and Christine started seeing each other as often as possible. With each encounter, their relationship deepened and their desire to be together grew. They shared a passion for travel, enjoying road trips to Florida and Washington, DC, and romantic getaways to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
They became closer with each trip. Christine will never forget the day when, while she and Raul were swimming in the Dominican Republic, he hugged her close and promised to one day marry her.
Meant to be
Within a year after Christine met Raul, she knew that he was the one. She describes her future husband as “a man of his word … He grounds me, yet he makes me feel as though I could reach higher than I could ever reach on my own.“
Raul shares that he was taken with Christine’s sincere interest in his life and his family. He had never met anyone who was so willing to be part of his life. “She’s never said “no” to anything,” Raul says. “From our first collegiate football game together, to a live soccer event, to a random work happy hour, she’s always been there with me.”
About the proposal
Raul stressed over planning the perfect time, day and place to propose. He wanted to pop the question on a summer Sunday at Liberty State Park while looking out at the New York City Skyline, but with rain in the forecast he moved his plan up a day. Luckily, the photographer he hired to capture the moment was still available.
After a romantic dinner at a Jersey City steakhouse, the couple strolled through Liberty State Park. When they reached the riverside walkway, they took pictures of the beautiful skyline view. Raul cleverly asked Christine to look toward the skyline so that he could get a picture of her looking out.
When Christine turned around to see if Raul was done “taking” the picture, she instead found him on one knee, holding the ring of her dreams. Through tears, Raul proposed. Christine was stunned. “When he told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, through tears … I said YES!”
About the ring
As Raul shopped for an engagement ring, he felt that Christine deserved the best he could offer. When he spoke to Mariana at Braunschweiger Jewelers, he knew he had come to the right place and found the one person to help him find the perfect ring.
“I gave Mariana two simple details: the shape I wanted, and my budget,” Raul recalls. “From there, she went to work.” During just the second visit, Mariana and Raul settled on the perfect ring: a 14k white gold band set with a beautiful oval-shaped solitaire diamond in platinum that Raul calls “sparkly perfection.” Christine also marvels at its beauty, calling it “much more than I ever dreamed of.”
Raul and Christine are planning their wedding for late 2021 – a time that, they hope, will be free of pandemic-related travel restrictions. But whatever happens, they know they have each other.