As many other millennial newlyweds, we met through matching on Hinge. Although the channel was fairly typical, the backstory is a bit more intriguing. Dennis, not one for small talk, was a bit of a Hinge amateur, and came across Lorin’s profile during a late night of drinking in Siesta Key with his friend Grant, his brother and his brother’s wife Kristen. Lorin didn’t have much patience for immature suitors so her strategy on the app was to set the age range to filter out anyone younger than her. Dennis, a whole 14 months younger than Lorin slipped into Lorin’s swipe queue just before Lorin readjusted her age range - some might call it fate. After a few weeks of dreaded small talk, Dennis decided to finally fly back from sunny Siesta Key, Florida to cold and snowy Boston in January 2021 to go on his date with Lorin. We shared drinks and appetizers (a foreshadow to the rest of our relationship) and talked about a broad spectrum of topics from Lorin’s career teaching math to 9th and 10th graders, to Bitcoin (Dennis' favorite topic at the time). We shared an Uber ride back to our respective homes, at which point Dennis attempted the mask to mask goodnight kiss in the Uber. As expected, the attempt failed, and through some miracle we have lived happily ever after since.

We planned to go to our favorite place, Portsmouth NH, on Good Friday. The night before, Lorin asked Dennis if they could change the plan and leave earlier in the morning so she could shop while Dennis worked (a preview to our life together?). While Lorin waited for the stores to open, the two sat at a coffee shop. Dennis was unsuccessfully trying to do work while contemplating just how he could get Lorin down to the waterfront for the proposal. Realizing he was getting nowhere with work, and that Lorin could very well shop all day, Dennis abruptly decided to go for it and asked Lorin if she wanted to go for a walk. We walked through our favorite city to a pier on the water in Prescott Park where Dennis got down on one knee, and for once, Lorin forgot all about shopping.