Once upon a time, there was a woman named Astrid who hosted an extremely niched storytelling show for people who had left bad religion. And also once upon a time, there was a person named Ileana who heard from a friend about this storytelling show, and on a whim reached out to see if there were open spots. There were! Astrid replied with a link to The Moth website and some Youtube videos as "exemplars," which Ileana found mildly insulting. They also immediately clocked Astrid as a teacher from the use of the word "exemplar." The night of the show, Ileana and Astrid both told their stories of leaving the Evangelicalism they were raised in for the first time to a public audience. They also both checked each other out. And the next day, Astrid messaged Ileana to take them up on their offer "to go get coffee or a drink sometime." Soon after they met up for a typical lesbian ambiguous hang at a queer bar uptown, during which their lovely bartender waited until Astridi was in the bathroom to tell Ileana, "You're on a date. I'm telling you because I can tell you don't know. But you're on a date, and she's into you." But Ileana still wasn't certain, and both of them were smitten yet terrified, so they ended the evening with a chaste hug. When Astrid got home that night, she sent the riskiest text of her life and told Ileana, "I'd love to take you out on a real, official date one night soon, if you'd like. The ball's in your court, Ortiz." But alas, this text would go unanswered until dawn's early light, because Ileana assumed it was a friend-zoning text and went to sleep without reading it so as not to ruin an otherwise perfect night. Astrid went to bed mortified but woke up to the best surprise--an enthusiastic YES OMG I'M SO SORRY. And from that moment, to use one of Ileana's favorite quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald, "they slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered." Fast forward a few years and a lot of twists and turns, and Ileana proposed to Astrid at the exact spot where they met--the stage of the Allways Lounge. A few weeks later, Astrid proposed back on the Holy Cross levee. This October, they'll exchange vows on that levee, and they hope you'll join them to witness it (and dance, and eat really good food).