Prepare thyselves for merriment!

Ashley's Story: I met Chae at Towson in 2014 and friended her on social media along with about 50 other freshman students. Although we were both in the English program, and even had overlapping friends, I didn't know Chae that well. The two things I remember the most are that 1) I thought her name was really pretty and 2) I thought she was really cool. After freshman year, Chae moved off campus and we honestly didn't interact much beyond liking each other's posts on Instagram. It wasn't until I got my job in Maryland that she came back into my life. I was driving around with my sister to check out some possible apartment choices and dragging my feet about the idea of making a Facebook post about needing a roommate. I knew it was financially the best choice, but I was also anxious about living with someone I didn't know. Eventually, I let Rachel make a post on my behalf to see if anyone needed someone to live with. Chae messaged me in four minutes. From there, it was onto divvying up furniture and signing a lease. If I'm being honest, I was still pretty nervous. I didn't really know Chae that well and I hadn't had the best luck with roommates in the past. However, I had absolutely nothing to worry about. In fact, I very quickly realized I was the luckiest person alive. Becoming best friends with Chae was one of the easiest decisions in the world. Falling in love with her was even easier. We did everything together and we had so many things in common, down to the most niche interests. (It made decoration decisions a very simple process) We threw parties together, shared friends, swapped books, and grew closer and closer every day. Before I knew it, she was my favorite person in the world. But we were roommates... I was terrified to tell her that I liked her. I hadn't really been in a relationship before and I couldn't fathom risking our friendship and our status living together. It didn't help that at the time we had just signed a 13-month lease at our second apartment together. However, liquid luck is a great motivator and when I finally confessed my feelings, Chae liked me back. Since then, our lives together have only grown. We've adopted our sweet cat, Luca, expanded our home library to over a thousand books, and been there for each other for every high and low. Now, we're taking the next step together. I know a lot of people consider marriage a new beginning. I don't. I just can't wait to keep building our lives together each and every day. (Also I want to throw an awesome party to celebrate with our loved ones) Chae's Story: Coming out of college I had my small group of people (hello y'all) but I didn't fully expect it to get much bigger. And then, entering stage left, was Ashley. Moving in together not only saved me from an hour long commute every day, but brought me to exactly where I needed to be in life. From 2018 onward, from our very first Christmas together with three plants and a tiny Christmas tree to the light-up Christmas topper and multiple trees, choosing Ash has been one of the easiest choices of my life. Each day and every day. Though we may have already grown out of this second apartment, our lives just keep growing richer each day and each day I am so much more thankful for that batch of (terrible) homemade margaritas that Ashley still insists weren't that bad. We've been through me switching schools and basically having to start at square one, to adopting Luca, to trying to understand just how to fit over a thousand books and more board games than we actually need into our space. And at the pinnacle is the Renaissance Faire itself. A staple and a cornerstone of our lives, it's something we countdown to every year. It has its own closet in our house that hopefully will soon overtake our actual one. And we cannot wait to use it to show just how much better our lives have gotten since the single good thing to ever come out of Facebook (see Ash's above for that story).