70 Pine Street, Floor 16. The exact details around introductions are a bit vague. At first Jason was just another one of those recruiters over in “corporate”, and Jessie was just an HR Associate in the business. Cue the financial crisis of 2009– somehow we have the mortgage backed security to thank for landing us in the same department. We quickly became lunch buddies and a friendship was quick to form. Eventually we both left 70 Pine, but we kept up periodically. His summary: I can't pinpoint a time of exactly when, but I always knew I liked you and that you were someone I really wanted in my life. I don’t know how or why I got so lucky but I somehow landed you. Her summary: It was easy to get a workplace “crush” on a cute nerd with his boy like smile. Sure, it took us a winding path to get here but I couldn’t imagine being any happier than I am- getting to spend the rest of my life with my best friend.

Reconnecting...eventually periodic catch-ups turned into near daily conversations where we realized that we both had some very, shall we say “colorful” pasts as well as some, let’s go with “interesting”, things that were going on with us currently. We found in each other a good friend with a lot of commonalities. At a certain point during the winter of 2017 Jess decided that it was time to meet up. I would say that after that, it was history but it took until July for her to actually take a risk and hop on an Amtrak down to Baltimore. After a bit of a wild weekend and a first date that included my Uncle Keith, we did finally hit our stride. I finally asked her what we were doing- or more specifically, “What is our relationship status?” (that's what you kid's do these days on the Facebook, right...) The answer ended up being that we were officially declaring ourselves a thing or an unstoppable force, if you will, and now here we are.

Fast forward 12 months of dating, vacationing, moving in together etc and we headed off to a much anticipated 12 day trip to Europe. First Stop-- Amsterdam. Leaving on a Thursday overnight flight we arrived in time to get ready for dinner at a restaurant Jason had found with an awesome tasting menu. The meal was fantastic, not that we knew what we were eating because we could barely understand half of what the wait staff was saying. Jason had decided to propose while in Europe but wasn’t exactly sure on timing – then he realized 1) he wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret very long and 2) he wanted to spend the entire trip celebrating. With that in mind, in a cute back alley in Amsterdam he proposed and of course I said Yes! Then we did just that, spent the next week and a half together getting to enjoy being engaged while traveling around Europe, celebrating, sightseeing and eating SO many desserts.