In 1998, Laura joined the orchestra as a freshman at Monacan High School in Richmond, VA. She sat in the back of the second violins, sharing a stand with a junior named Michael. As the last two chairs in the section, their main contribution was looking busy while faking their way through each piece, and goofing off. Michael's job was to turn the pages, while Laura pretended she knew what measure they were on.

Twenty-five years later, Michael received a Facebook request from Laura. They reconnected online and over the phone, spending hours catching up on life, and not long after began spending every weekend together. Suddenly the violinists who once faked their way through orchestra as teenagers were again partners, faking their way through adulthood.

In February, Michael and Laura flew to Boston for an annual event with one of his clubs, the family winter weekend. After a tour of Michael’s favorite spots in Downtown Boston, they headed up to the event in North Conway, New Hampshire where they had planned to enjoy a dinner at a historic tavern, a visit to an ice castle, snow tubing, and a horse drawn sleigh ride through the snowed woods. On the way, Michael stopped at a small wood bridge at Lake Chocorua, another one of his favorite spots. Bundled up and wearing their matching Timberland Chocorua hiking boots (because of course they had matching boots), they walked down to the lake to take some pictures of the mountain. The stated plan was to take a “boot photo,” to get their matching Chocorua boots, with the frozen lake and mountain that they were named after in the background. Then Michael asked Laura to snap a picture of just his boots. A little confused, as Laura was concentrating on framing the perfect shot, Michael pulled the ring from his pocket and got down on one knee. Laura’s hand was freezing, but not too cold to say “yes,” and they captured the moment in a photo, which turned out to be Michael’s real plan the whole time.

We chose Maymont for our ceremony because we both have memories of the park throughout our entire lives and we couldn't think of a better location than the Italian Gardens. We chose Angelo's Restaurant for our reception because it has been one of our favorite restaurants since we were children. While planning the remaining details of our wedding, we had the idea to look up our former violin teacher from high school, Jill Foster. We discovered she was still in the Richmond area and plays at weddings. We couldn’t be happier that her violin duo, Jolie Deux, will be playing at our ceremony, making our perfect day even more perfect.