We were both invited to our mutual friend Joyah’s birthday party. Each of us had considered not going to the party that night, but ultimately decided it would be fun and went. We saw each other early on, but didn’t talk until towards the end of the party. Once we got to talking, we quickly bonded over an abundance of customer service horror stories (Claire working at Rite Aid, Alex at Target). Eventually Alex left and Claire stayed back with Joyah. Claire really stuck out to Alex, and he planned to reach out to her the next day. It turns out, Claire was thinking the same thing! It took us about a year into our relationship to find out that Joyah had actually intended to set us up all along, and had invited Alex specifically so we could meet each other. After a few days of texting, Alex asked Claire out on our first date and we decided to go bowling! Alex decided on the very bold move of bringing his own bowling shoes on the first date…Claire decided to ignore this mild red flag and she’s so glad she did. From the moment the date started, our conversations felt so natural and we never ran out of things to talk about. From then on, we have talked everyday since! The first year of our relationship was during the Covid lockdown, and was spent exploring local parks, dinner dates in our cars with takeout, and in our childhood homes. While it was not your typical year, we got to spend a lot of time talking and getting to know each other and began falling even more in love. In 2022, we both moved to our respective colleges and began what would start our three years of "long" distance. While only an hour apart, neither of us had a car and the first time Alex visited Claire he took a Byrd scooter, a train, and a bus to be able to celebrate her birthday at JMU. He very soon met Ronald at UVA, whose girlfriend lived across the street from Claire at JMU and they would soon spend many weekends driving to JMU together. After the several years of long distance, Alex finally moved to Richmond to be with Claire and they have loved getting to explore the city together ever since! In the fall of 2025, we had trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, which had been planned for a while, but Alex decided to transform it into a surprise engagement trip. The night before, he had convinced Claire to dress up a little for our walk to Cataract Falls under the guise of “Christmas card photos”. When we passed a photographer, she claimed she was “just taking photos of the chipmunks”. Somehow, Alex got Claire to believe it all! As Alex stepped up to the waterfall at the end of the walk, he turned to Claire, got on one knee, and asked Claire to marry him. It was the perfect surprise and we have been overjoyed as we start to plan our life together and cannot wait for our love story to continue as husband and wife!