Our story starts on April 3rd, 2021. At the time, I was in the middle of my travel nursing contract in Texas, but came home for Easter weekend. If you know me, you know that I love my friends, so I had made plans to have dinner while I was in town with my best girlfriends at Porch and Parlor. Little did I know that this dinner would end in meeting my future husband.

We get seated at Porch and Parlor and us girls are naturally chit chatting, catching up, and getting our food options locked down. (Side Note: Porch and Parlor is known for their gourmet fancy bacon rack so obviously that was a must, a very important part of this story!) Meanwhile, David- just a stranger at this point, is also here having dinner with a group of friends. We ordered our cocktails and bacon appetizer, and here comes David's "brother" approaching the table. (AKA Payton Seelinger) Like a good wingman, he says “I don’t know if any of you ladies are single, but this is my “brother” David over here." He really made sure to emphasize to us that he was an oral surgeon, worked at Regional One, and was a top-notch guy. My friend Sam engages with him and points out the single girls at the table. Our waitress then brings out the rack of bacon and says, “This bacon is actually from this table over here.” You guessed it- David’s table! You can only imagine the table of girls giggling and fully invested in the situation. All of my friends at dinner are teasing me and encouraging me to approach him, but I’m way too shy to make the move. Finally, my not so shy friend Hannah, approaches him and says pointing at me, “Hey this is my friend Taylor over there. She’s a nurse (lol) and I’d love to get your number for her.” Immediately (per Hannah and David), David says “I’m way ahead of you” as he had already written his name and number on a fancy restaurant cloth napkin. Hannah comes back over to the table and told me “I should have just waited; he was already going to come over here”. A few moments later, as I’m just enjoying my French onion soup, David walks up to me with that white cloth napkin at a table full of my best friends. We locked eyes and then I'm pretty positive I just blacked out. I do remember him shaking my hand and saying “Hi, I’m David and would love to take you out.” As him and his friends were leaving, I think our whole table had to pick our jaw off the ground at what just happened. I instantly had butterflies and a good intuition about him. In a true girl team effort, I composed a text to send, and we had a date set two days later.

David and I hit it off immediately on our first date. He had me giggling and smiling then just as much as he still does today. I was only in town from travel nursing for a week, but our first date went so well that we ended up hanging out again for my last night in Memphis. I went back to Texas a little sad and a lot giddy, for three weeks to finish out my contract, but we naturally stayed in touch everyday with daily texts and FaceTime dates. I came back to Memphis thinking I would continue travel nursing longer, but God had other plans by connecting me back to my original job at Methodist Germantown and thankfully keeping me close to David. And the rest is history! April 8th, 2023 on our two year anniversary date, after dinner at Porch and Parlor (obviously), on a beautiful Memphis rooftop overlooking Porch and Parlor, he asked me to marry him.

June 22nd, 2024 will be our most special day yet! And yes the white cloth napkin that started it all will be there!

Registry