We met on the Portland Spirit in Portland, Oregon. He was the boat engineer and I was the cruise manager. I was trying to move past him and got stuck, and it wasn’t until I looked up to see him looking at me questioningly that I realized my hand was on his bicep. I said “sorry” and literally ran away up to the stairs, to which he chuckled. We would all go out for drinks and we slowly became best friends for a year before admitting our feelings for one another. Then we were inseparable!

When I met his family in person for the first time, we had all went to Colorado to spend 10 days together. We had met over FaceTime and talked over the course of a few years so it was time. We had all sat for dinner and his niece asked “are you and my unkie married” radio silence, and then someone immediately changed the subject as he and I both awkwardly laughed. And every time we visited, like clock work she would ask over the span of 6 years, and then it became an expectation for her to ask!

We are both in graduate school, we have a dog and we want to start a family. It’s hard because to work and go to school is a lot of time away from home so after our wedding we immediately went back into our professional roles. This money would help us have a well deserved honeymoon. We are both studious individuals who take our work and education very seriously, so to be able to have a dream honeymoon (and pay for our dogs surgery) would be amazing!