Growing up just 20-some minutes away from each other, it took 21 years for us to meet. During the summer heading into our senior year, we met on a night out back home. Luke’s best friend, Cal, had recently started dating Meredith’s best friend, Carey. After some mutual introductions and a bit of small talk that night, we headed back to college with each other on our minds. Later that Fall, Luke and Cal were heading down to Clemson to visit Carey and catch a football game. Once Meredith got word of the trip being planned, she made sure to invite herself. Although Luke was hundreds of miles away from Penn State, his favorite and most memorable football game ever attended suddenly became that Saturday in November. After the Clemson weekend, we spent nearly all of Thanksgiving and Christmas break together. Even though we only had three weeks at home, we made sure to make every moment count. With a little nudge from Meredith, we officially became a couple on December 24, 2018. Long distance was an immediate reality with each of us going back to school for our last undergraduate semester. We had a few weeks back home in the summer after graduating before that distance became even greater with Luke moving to Houston, TX. We took every chance we had to visit each other, whether that was at East Carolina, Houston, or Philadelphia - where Meredith got her first job out of school. When we couldn’t travel we spent hours on Facetime and wrote each other letters back and forth. Eventually, with some convincing from Luke and help from a global pandemic, Meredith moved down to Houston and we got our first apartment together. If you ask either of us when we knew we were going to marry each other, we would both say very early on in our relationship. The day we knew for sure was on September 23, 2022 at a picnic in our favorite park. After a few close calls of Meredith almost catching on, Luke was on one knee to propose. We drove back to our apartment where we were surprised by our family and friends ready to celebrate our engagement. We are both so excited that our wedding day will be filled with people who have had such large impacts on our lives. We hope you can join us to celebrate the love we have for each other and for each of you. Meredith and Luke