Timeline
September 2006: Maddy transfers to Wilton High School where Maddy and Antoine meet for the first time. They are not friends.
February 2008: Maddy has a Sweet 16 party and doesn’t invite Antoine. Antoine decides to crash the party under Dan Mangan’s name.
January 2010: Antoine rear-ends Maddy on the way to school one snowy morning.
June 2012: Maddy and Antoine begin hanging out regularly. They bond over partying, drinking and the fact that they’re both transferring to new schools in the fall (Antoine to UCONN and Maddy to University of Miami.)
October 2012: Maddy decides to go visit Antoine and CT friends at UCONN with her roommate. Maddy realizes she has much stronger feelings for Antoine than she thought, so when she gets back to Miami, she immediately applies to study abroad in Australia.
November 2012: Antoine and Maddy meet for lunch, but neither of them wants it to end there, so they instead go back to Maddy’s house to… watch the entire first season of Game of Thrones.
January 2013: Maddy confesses her feelings to Antoine and he tells her he’s felt the same. They start dating.
February 2013: Maddy tells Antoine she loves him and then leaves for Australia one week later.
September 2013: Maddy adopts Charlie and they fly to CT so she can meet her daddy!
December 2014: Maddy graduates from college and moves back to Connecticut to attend Culinary School in NY.
September 2015: Maddy moves into a tiny studio in New York, Antoine spends the weekends there and commutes to UCONN twice a week to finish his degree-- Antoine has already decided he will be a professional poker player.
January 2016: Antoine moves in with Maddy and they learn to live (barely) in 500 square feet without walls. The bathroom is used as an escape.
July 2016: Antoine and Maddy move to a one bedroom (thank god!) but still in NYC.
August 2018: Maddy gets a job in Naperville, IL and so they pack up a Uhaul and drive west.
January 2019: Maddy and Antoine decide they hate Naperville, IL.
September 2019: Maddy quits her job to start C.B. Dough.
November 2019: Antoine and Maddy realize they have no more need to stay in Illinois and decide to move out to Denver, CO.
January 2020: They once again pack a Uhaul and drive west!
November 2020: Antoine and Maddy (and Charlie) realize they love Denver and don’t want to leave. They buy a house.
January 15th 2021: Antoine and Maddy move into their house and that night, Antoine proposes to Maddy…
The Proposal Stories
Antoine's Story
After slowly moving across the country and bouncing from apartment to apartment, Maddy and I finally found a city that we felt like could be home. Denver and Colorado in general had everything we wanted: beautiful hikes, outdoor activities, a great city to explore, and most importantly close friends. All that was left was to find a house! Thanks to Maddy's obsession with monitoring the Denver housing market, we found the perfect place for us. With only a couple days to make a decision, we put in an offer after only seeing it once, and the house was ours!
After countless trips moving from our old apartment, Maddy and I were finally ready to spend our first night in our new house. I had a plan to cook dinner with her, (that's a rarity, she is the chef after all), and ask her to marry me. The move was so exhausting that we instead decided to order from a restaurant nearby, open up some wine, and relax. After building up the courage, I walked over to our living room window and acted like I saw a big deer outside. I told Maddy that she had to come look, and as she put her face to the window, I moved behind her and giggled while I got on one knee. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but when she turned around I forgot everything and all I could come up with was "Hello" and a smile. Luckily, the words came back to me and I told her how I didn't want to spend the first night in our new house without knowing that she would be my wife... she said yes!
Now we can't wait to celebrate with all our friends and family!
Maddy's Story
The night we moved into our house, I was exhausted. We had been moving for 12 hours and Antoine kept talking about how he wanted us to make dinner together in our new kitchen to commemorate the occasion. We managed to agree on ordering from a delicious Italian restaurant, while I showered and put pajamas on. We ate pizza and pasta, opened a nice bottle of wine and had a second to enjoy the fact that we were most likely not going to move again for a very long time. But then suddenly a deer appeared in the front windows!
“Look Maddy! A huge deer across the street! You have to hold your hands around your eyes to block the light!” So I went to the window, held my hands up against it and listened to Antoine laugh behind me. “You’re lying! There’s no deer, god Antoine you’re so annoying, why do you think this is funny!?” And when I turned around to confront him, he was kneeling there holding an engagement ring. He told me that he didn’t want to spend the first night in our home without knowing I would be his wife.
And I very happily agreed. Now it’s time to party!