Our lives had crossed paths numerous times before, whether on the side lines of Haverford Youth football games or Sacred Heart CYO Baseball Games… but despite both our initial hesitation, our love flourished in October of 2013. Two people, who are still very special in our world today (Madison Lane & Nolan Buszka), set us up. After 2 months of exchanging text messages and walking from class to class together… Denis made it official in the halls of Haverford High School. After high school graduation Denis went off to Penn State University and a year later, Heather started at Ursinus College. 179 miles away…. It was not easy, but we made it work! One Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor and Masters of Architectural Engineering later, Denis was off to Wilmington DE for his first job and Heather to Aston, PA to start her journey to becoming a physical therapist. Now both living in Havertown, 9 years after the first question, Denis asked the most important question to make it all official on 7/1/2023! Now, 11 years later we’re gearing up for the most important day.

One of Heather’s few weekends off from PT school Denis started the day by setting up a very out of character date in Philadelphia (something Heather had been asking for for 9 years now). We took a stroll around the city, got a few drinks, and a nice dinner. The plan was to go back to the Spaventa’s house for some more drinks and a deck hangout. Heather not expecting anything actually fell asleep on the ride back to Havertown. When we arrived Denis rushed to the passenger side door to open it (just like his dad taught him) for me and he led Heather into his backyard where there was a large white tent set up. At this point Heather was already in tears (big shocker). We unzippered the opening to the tent to find a path of sunflowers and all of our photos hung up along the walls of the tent from the past 9 years together. With shaking hands we opened the final zipper of the tent together to uncover rose petals in a heart shape on the ground and large light up letters spelling out “Marry Me”.