In 2019, we knew we wanted to make our lives together and started planning. We got engaged at the San Francisco Zoo in front of the red panda exhibit in March. We needed to change our plans only a couple months into 2020. After spending the year at home together, and as we mourned some sudden family losses, we came to realize that we were more than ready to honor the little family that we are, even if we couldn't invite our loved ones. We tied the knot privately in a redwood forest by the sea in November. We hope you'll come to celebrate with us and our families at our fully outdoor wedding this June 18, 2022!

At Harvard, Jelle studied fossil mammals and Jennifer studied biomaterials. While doing undergrad research in the summer, we went to the same Bible study. Jelle remembers Jennifer proudly explaining how she was living cheaply on spaghetti and peanut butter jelly sandwiches. Jennifer doesn't remember meeting Jelle because he never said anything. During the school year, Jelle was "the guy who advances the slides at Friday night worship" and Jennifer was "the girl who shows up early to sleep on the windowsill". Jelle thought this was "cute". He always came over nervously to talk to her. Jennifer thought this was "suspicious". Many programming problem sets and shy walks in the snow later, we realized we wanted to be together as more than friends. With impeccable timing, Jelle graduated and moved to California. After a year of long distance, Jennifer started her PhD in Bioengineering at UC Berkeley-UCSF, not far from where Jelle was working as a software engineer at Quora.