Derek grew up in Nebraska and spent his first 22 years there until enlisting in the army and bouncing around from place to place. Angela, on the other hand, grew up in China and spent her whole life there until 2018, when she (for some crazy reason) chose to move halfway across the world to attend pharmacy school in, you guessed it, Nebraska of all places. It just so happened Derek was finishing up law school in 2021 and decided to take a job in NE, marking an unexpected move back home from LA. Angela was entering her final year of pharmacy school and beginning to think of her next move; maybe to the east coast, west coast, or even back to China. Luckily, we both decided this was prime time to get out there and meet some new people. Even more lucky, NE happens to be a very small place (shocking, we know). Despite living in different cities, 1.5 hours apart, we managed to catch each others’ eyes on a dating app. Again, NE is a very small place. After talking for about a week, we met up for a date. We kept it very low-key but made sure to include some of our favorite shared activities; a nice, serene nature hike, and of course, some delicious food. We went to one of Angela’s favorite Thai restaurants, where she proceeded to order and eat about half the menu (only a minor exaggeration). To this day, Derek maintains she can eat more Asian food than anyone else he’s ever met. A week later, for our second date, Derek thought it would be fun to arrange a drive-in movie at an old, classic theater. Again, he would make the long drive to see Angela, but decided to put her in charge of bringing the movie snacks. As some of you may know, Derek is a bit of a car person, and he decided to bring his prized Camaro for the showing, breaking his own “no food or drink in the Camaro” rule. I mean it was just supposed to be movie snacks, how bad could it be? Well, little did he know that Angela’s idea of the perfect late-night, middle-of-summer, drive-in movie snack just so happened to be… two giant bowls of takeout ramen that required dangerously pouring the soup and noodles together. By some miracle, no Camaros were hurt in the making/eating of said “movie snack,” but this did mark another fond memory of ours. Neither of us could tell you what movie we saw, but we’ll always remember that night and its somewhat unorthodox movie snack. Fast forward to Angela’s pharmacy school graduation. By that time, we already knew we were meant for each other, and decided to move across the country to an unfamiliar place - Florida. Angela accepted her pharmacy residency in Orlando and we knew we wanted to stay together no matter what. What Angela didn’t know, however, was that Derek also planned to propose that weekend. Well, that may not be entirely accurate. She did know Derek was going to propose, just not when. Funny enough, Derek, wanting to keep with tradition, reached out to Angela’s dad and asked permission to marry his daughter (in what he maintains was “perfect” Mandarin). Fortunately, there wasn’t any miscommunication. Unfortunately, Angela’s dad wasn’t entirely familiar with this tradition. He decided he should probably check with her as well to see if she was actually on board with Derek’s proposal, which of course hadn’t happened yet. So, while the question itself was out of the bag, at least the time and place were not. In fact, the very next day Derek took Angela to her favorite garden. Fields of white tulips (her favorite flower) were in full bloom, and Derek still managed to pop the question with a bit of surprise. That was a little over two years ago, and so much has happened since. We’ve made multiple moves together, traveled across the US, bought a house, switched jobs, and kept true to our hobbies and passions, including spending countless hours with our dorky doggos. In that time, we’ve faced many challenges, but have grown so much closer. And now, we couldn’t be happier to take this next big step with all of our wonderful guests.