In the year 2020, the whole world changed… COVID also happened. But the bigger story was happening in the small town of Pacific Beach, where I relentlessly bothered Anabelle’s best friend (shoutout Kelsey) to give me her number (after drooling over her most recent Instagram post) until she finally agreed. The only issue was a 523-mile elephant in the room: Anabelle lived in Napa, and I was in San Diego. After weeks of texting, hiding long calls from our roommates and parents, and FaceTimes to make sure we weren’t catfishing each other, Anabelle made a trip down to visit her friends. We hit it off so well that she extended her trip a day so we could go to a Tame Impala concert and things really just escalated from there… in a good way. We went from a weekend soiree and being infatuated with each other to the cold reality that we lived in different cities. The light at the end of the tunnel was that Anabelle was moving to San Diego in a few months, so we both agreed our chemistry was worth a few pesky months of long distance. We definitely were not anticipating a pandemic, but we made it work. If you haven’t had a FaceTime movie date trying to sync play buttons at the exact same time, you haven’t lived!! This ultimately led to a lockdown Palm Springs trip with friends, where a game of rock-paper-scissors decided that we should make things official. It sounds super weird when we tell people we started long distance, but it gave us such a strong foundation. We talked about EVERYTHING and learned so much about each other before we ever lived in the same city - it made it feel like we had known each other for years. Once Anabelle moved to San Diego, things really hit their stride. Days at the beach, going out in PB, Jersey Shore/Halloween/any themed parties our friend groups could come up with, going on each other’s family lake trips, losing loved ones, having our siblings get married, taking turns driving to each other’s houses every night, discovering our joint love of Fireball, getting too drunk in front of each other’s parents, we really checked all the boxes. The only box left unchecked was moving in together, so we thought f*** it, let’s make it a double whammy and move to a new state too. Somehow, Anabelle agreed to move to Texas with me, so we packed up our lives and drove to Austin. On top of moving in together for the first time, moving into an apartment we had never seen, hoping our POD showed up, not knowing anyone, and Anabelle starting a new job… we had to drive 30 hours through some real uninspiring parts of the country (which is a gut check for anyone). We walked up to our new apartment in 100-degree Texas heat with nervous tummies, opened the door, and started our next chapter. For some couples, moving in together is a big change and comes with its challenges. For us, it was truly seamless. The last two years in Austin have been some of the best of our lives: we were forced to branch out and meet new friends, we learned how to two-step, went to New Orleans and Japan, went to a bunch of college football games, tried a bunch of new restaurants and dive bars, and in October of 2024, we got engaged in Fredericksburg (wine country Texas) in front of both of our parents. Each step of our relationship thus far has felt natural and exciting, and we are so honored and fired up to be able to celebrate the next step with you all at the wedding!