Garrett says:
Karen and I met September 30, 2001 at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Since I'm local to the area, I was usually there every weekend. She had come up from NC with some friends and made some new ones.

On this particular Sunday, she was walking around with Sharon (from NC) and Kate (from CA). One of the other locals, Danicia, had come up with a game to facilitate the meetings of locals and visitors. Each local was given clues to one of the visitors and they in turn were given clues to a local. The game was to try and figure out who your person was and in turn send anonymous clues to your counterpart.

It turned out that my counterpart was Sharon and I was hers. While we were figuring this out, Karen and Kate had walked away to get some drinks. The story *I* heard is that while Kate was extolling my virtues (and no, I didn't pay her!), Karen made the comment, "Too bad he isn't single." Kate quickly corrected that notion.

Eventually they came back to where Sharon and I were sitting. The ladies decided they wanted to go down the "Big Slide". I waited at the bottom and took some pictures with their cameras while they played. I'm not sure exactly how or when it happened but at some point while on our way back to rejoin the group Karen and I ended up holding hands.

After the Faire ended, we all went out to dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant. It was quite obvious to everyone that we interested in each other. I hung around with them for as long as I could but eventually I had to leave to go home.

One year later I asked her to marry me, she said "yes" and we had dinner again at that same Italian restaurant.