We met via an online dating app, Tinder. On the first day of chatting, we realized that between each of our summer travel plans, the following night would be the only opportunity to meet up in "real life" for the next two weeks. We decided to meet up at a bar down the block from Maria, and even though she was over an hour late to the date, we hit it off enough to continue the night with Maria's friend (shoutout bridesmaid Lauren) at Chicago staples Guthrie's and Slugger's. Almost five years later and half a country farther away, here we are :)

It was a regular Friday night two months into their LA living and Sam texted Maria to figure out the time she was going to get home from work. She said she would arrive in 15 minutes, but similar to her first date, she was an hour late. When she finally got home Sam mentioned he had a present waiting in the bedroom. Maria made her way to the bedroom thinking he had gotten her a USC T-shirt for an upcoming tailgate, but didn't see anything. Sam told her to look under the pillow on the dresser, and to her surprise there was a bottle of champagne and a framed picture. Confused, she turned around and found Sam on one knee. They toasted to their engagement, went to their local taco man for a celebratory dinner, and the rest is history!

As your original invitation will have stated way back when, our original wedding date was May 2, 2020. Around March 10th we picked up our marriage license in preparation for the big day. As you all know, this ended up being *just* before the world shut down and all in-person licenses stopped being issued in LA. With the COVID pandemic worsening, we moved our wedding day from May 2 to September 5, because the world had to be back to normal by then, right? Not so much. It soon became clear that no in-person wedding ceremony was going to be occurring for us anytime soon. As some of you know, our plan from the get-go was to have both a Catholic wedding ceremony (in the church, on May 1) and a Jewish wedding ceremony (at Ruby Street, on May 2). Since we had already gotten our marriage license the clock was quickly ticking towards the expiration date. Thankfully, we were able to work with the Catholic church and hold a wedding on June 5. In true 2020 fashion, while a drive-by graduation was going on outside, we were married in a small ceremony with only 5 fully-masked people in attendance - us, two witnesses, and the priest. While we wish everything could have gone ahead as planned with all our friends and family present, we're extremely grateful that we were able to get married and will always cherish our special day :). We've included pictures of our day on this site so you can see us in all of our face masked, long hair, June 2020 glory. Now, almost 18 months later this December, we couldn't be more excited to (finally!) get to celebrate our marriage with friends and family.