Like typical Bay Area millennials, we met on a dating app. It was the beginning of March 2018. Brianna was newly single and living in the city, while Hunter had recently moved to California after several years in a traveling role with his company. He was living in Oakland and apparently having a tough time convincing the ladies of San Francisco to cross the bridge. It may have been that the 10 mile distance was just too far for the average Marina girl to travel or that he was wearing sunglasses in every photo on his Hinge profile... or both. Nevertheless, Brianna thought his smile was cute and his zip code (the midpoint of her daily commute) was an asset, so she took a chance and swiped right. No risk, no reward! On their first date, 5'2 Brianna spent most of the walk from her apartment to the restaurant craning her neck upward at 6'2 Hunter. Drinks turned into dinner and then more drinks, until eventually all the bars started to close down. After walking Brianna home, Hunter sealed the deal by awkwardly attempting to kiss her (on the nose? on the cheek? unclear what was going on). He blames the height difference for the blundering performance, but let's be real...it was nerves. Brianna found the whole thing quite endearing, and more dates followed. By the end of March, Brianna was ready to abandon her infamous "dating spreadsheet", which kept track of the 16 dates she went on that month, and just see Hunter. He is still flattered that his was the only cell on the spreadsheet that remained green in a sea of red or yellow during her short-lived experiment. She was stoked to return to weeknights in sweatpants. By the end of April, we had booked a 10 day trip to Japan together for November. Purchasing the tickets with expiring airline miles lowered the stakes, but we were clearly very confident in the future of our new relationship to plan an international trip 7 months out. Our instincts turned out to be spot on. Here we are, 3 years later, planning a wedding!

As those of you who know her will agree, Brianna is very decisive in her tastes. Any scenario in which she did not choose her own engagement ring was unlikely to end well. Hunter definitely had his work cut out for him if he was going to keep any element of the proposal a secret. Adding to the challenge, COVID hit one week after he purchased the diamond (Brianna in tow). While Hunter knew Brianna would be mortified if he proposed when she wasn't photo-ready, she had failed to emerge from her sweatpants, blow dry her hair, get a manicure, or wear makeup since the first day of lockdown. Buying a cabin together only made things worse, as every spare moment was spent covered in mortar, paint and spackle while renovating. To top things off, half of San Francisco apparently hustled to find a life partner during the pandemic and overwhelmed the jeweler Brianna had insisted on using to set the ring, turning that process into a months-long saga. At this point, Brianna knew she and Hunter were getting engaged. She was too exhausted from remodeling and sad watching friends postpone their weddings to care much about timing. Just when her senses were dull enough for Hunter to pull off a surprise proposal, Brianna's parents began to panic in that special way only parents do and subject her to weekly "nudges." Three weeks of this "nudging" was all Brianna could take before she told Hunter that all future parental inquiries would be re-directed his way if her left hand looked the same by month's end. Hunter, who had already planned to throw her off by proposing that weekend on his birthday (a convenient excuse to dress up), was defeated. Brianna knew exactly what was going on when he suggested stopping for a photo on his cousin's dock and "fought" him, feigning concern for their dinner reservation. He then delivered a three sentence proposal. Ahh, the romance. Despite her love language being "words of affirmation", she said yes!