In the summer of 2017, we met through our mutual best friend, Sienna. Leslie was living in Chicago at the time and was visiting for a week. Leslie thinks this is important to the story, but she was wasted when she met Brendan. All of a sudden, she "woke up" and Brendan had asked her "what type of music do you like to listen to?" He has such an earnest way about him that Leslie knew in that moment that he cared about her answer. We quickly bonded over our love of the band The Script and kept talking occasionally over Snapchat. Brendan had never been to Chicago before and a few friends had already visited Leslie, so she invited him to come visit for a weekend and thought nothing of it. However, when Brendan booked his flight, they just kept talking. Conversation flowed so easily and inside jokes were already being cemented. In February of 2018, Brendan flew to Chicago for the first (and certainly not last) time. After walking what felt like all over the city of Chicago, they both felt like this was something to explore, so they talked about trying the distance thing. In early 2019, we decided that the distance was too hard and Leslie decided it made sense to move to Colorado to see if this relationship could work. What do you know, it did. In 2020, we got our first apartment together. Shortly after, our boy dog, Camo, was added to the mix. In 2022, we closed on our first home and 6 months later, added our girl dog, Jet, to the family. In October of 2023, we went up to Telluride and Brendan popped the question in the most perfect way. And Leslie had NO idea, which was the most important part. We took 2024 to be engaged and slowly plan the best day ever. And now here we are, planning the biggest party of our lives so we can celebrate the beginning of forever with everyone we love. We can't wait to see you all this year, 2025!