The Beginning of Our Happily Ever After...

If you didn’t already know, our moms, Terry and Anne, have been friends since sixth grade. We don’t think they ever imagined that this would happen one day, but we hope they are glad that it did. It certainly made the whole awkward "meeting the parents for the first time" situation a bit easier. And, from day one, we were both immediately accepted as part of the family. So yes, we did “know” one another when we were kids, mostly through Christmas cards and in passing conversations. We also had met once in person when we were teenagers when Michelle and Anne visited NYC for a Triathlon. This is also the trip that basically sparked Michelle’s love for NYC… but maybe it wasn't just the city... ;). After re-meeting when Michelle moved to NYC Summer 2016 for an internship, we started dating and we spent almost every subsequent weekend together either in NYC or Summit, NJ. After that first summer, we both went back to Michigan and again, spent almost every weekend traveling back and forth between East Lansing and Ann Arbor. After graduating in December, Michelle went to Disney and Joe finished up school. The long distance was a test to our new relationship and we came out of it stronger than ever! That Summer, we both went home and started job hunting until Michelle moved to NYC in July 2017. After that, we went back to weekends in NYC & weekends in New Jersey enjoying many evenings of fancy dinners, family game nights & fun adventures. This continued for a few years until Joe and his family moved to Columbus Circle in February 2020. Over the next year and a half, we were fortunate to spend more time than ever working from home and traveling to spend weeks at a time at each other’s homes in Michigan, Kiawah & NYC. In July 2021, we decided to take a trip to the most magical place on earth to celebrate moving to Charleston before Joe began Law School. Since we couldn't make it to the real Paris, Joe chose the next best thing and proposed at Paris EPCOT. We have been enjoying our new life together in Charleston and cannot wait for happily ever after…