She went to Florida State and did hospitality management.

She worked for a hotel group in Tampa for six years and hated it.

In 2016 she started an event-planning business out of her apartment in Jacksonville with one client and a folding table.

By the time she met Christian she had four employees, an office in Riverside, and a book of business that was mostly corporate — awards dinners, incentive weekends, the annual meeting of a regional bank, a great deal of work for two hospital foundations.

She was thirty-eight.

She had been engaged once before, in 2014, and had ended it herself.