Our story starts like most modern love stories with a swipe right and a little banter back and forth over an app, in our case about Andrew’s “sweat outfit” (now we have matching ones!). I would be remiss though to not include a little dose of serendipity that accompanied our love story. Like most women these days, I had had my trials and tribulations with dating: my fair share of terrible dates, promising dates that led nowhere, almosts, heartbreaks and the inevitable situationships. Trying to change a bit of that dating luck, my friend Linda suggested we write letters to our future partners; letters that included everything I wanted my future husband to be, everything I wanted him to love about me and what I wanted our lives to look like together. We wrote our letters and burned them the next day (not before taking a picture of it of course) and sent them out into the universe to hopefully bring back the man in the letter. Though a bit of a skeptic myself, who would say no to a little bit of girl magic fun and the possibility of it leading to something beautiful. The next day I gave Andrew my phone number. We went on our first date a few weeks later, the last first date for both of us. I remember many details of that date so clearly, but most of all I remember the feeling I had, Andrew made me feel at ease almost immediately. For anyone who knows me well they know “at ease” is not a feeling that comes easily for me. I remember noticing how kind his eyes were and how easily conversation came, we joked about how the name of the oysters we ordered, mookie blues, would make a great Jazz band name (we settled on Lenny and the Mookie Blues) and before I knew it we were an hour into the date without even getting to the standard “so what do you do?” question. I left that date with a really good feeling. Things moved quickly from there, not to quote my favorite guilty pleasure TV show, The Bachelor, but “when you know you know”. Over the next several months it became clear though, that Andrew was the man in the letter. I remember paying for a date early on and saying something about how he had gotten the last one, he looked at me so seriously and said, “I want to make sure things are equitable in our relationship, they don’t always have to be equal”. I instantly remembered writing that same sentiment in my letter. Another time, we were talking about eye color and Andrew said, “I just have boring brown eyes”. I responded, “I think you have kind eyes”. A while later I reread the pictures of the letter I took and to my surprise had written, “you have kind eyes”. Who knows if the letter really had anything to do with it, but what I do know is I found a partner that had truly everything I had been searching for in a partner and things I didn’t even know I needed. Andrew has made me feel so safe, so loved and like I can do anything I aspire to do, knowing that whatever happens I have a safe place to land. Our first trip together was to Burlington, VT. We took a hike on that trip and shared about our pasts and some of our deepest vulnerabilities. I had never felt so accepted and cherished by someone after sharing those things and though I didn’t say it at the time, I knew I loved him then. We returned a little over a year later and Andrew proposed on the same hike in promising to always love me, communicate with me and support me. Burlington has become such a special place to us because of all these shared memories and we can’t wait to get married there and share another beautiful memory with all of you.