Agustin and Natalie met at California State Long Beach October 2014. Agustin was the vice president of the (unofficial) Pokemon Club at the time. Natalie was a college freshman still figuring out how to navigate college. She discovered Pokemon Club where chaos just seemed to unfold. In the center of the chaos was Agustin, complaining about people stealing his blaziken. For whatever reason, Natalie decided to stay and start playing her own Pokemon game. One of the other founding club members started talking to her and introduced her to Agustin. Agustin then walked her back to her dorm at the end of the night.

I don't know who's idea it was to go to San Francisco the weekend before classes started, but somehow the idea stuck. This was the first Pokemon Worlds in California, so we didn't want to miss this opportunity. I should preface this with, neither of us were going there to compete. We were there to meet some content creators, shop the pokemon merch, and maybe watch some games. The whole trip was a bit of a whirlwind and very chaotic. We rented a car and drove up Thursday night. Friday was day one of the competitions, so we got up early to not miss anything. Unfortunately, the venue did not let us in. We were lost as to what to do at that point and went to the nearby Starbucks. While we were there, our favorite pokemon content creator (Joey, aka pokeaimMD) came in and he walked up to us immediately because we were wearing his bright purple merch. It was great having a chance to talk to him, and we told him how we couldn't get into the venue. He then gave us his own pass so that we could get in. We have never forgotten his kindness. That pass was specifically to compete at Pokken at the time, and we used it to slip into the venue with the other Pokken players, who at that point were now late to their games. I was just happy we got in at all. Later that day there was a content creator meetup and we got to say hi to Joey again and all the other pokemon content creators. It was an amazing day, despite the rocky start. It is also great to say that we were there when Wolfe Glick (an American Pokemon VGC player) won Pokemon World's master's division that year. All of that almost makes up for the fact that we had classes the following Monday.

Agustin took Natalie out to a nice dinner at The Girl and the Goat. This was the restaurant we went to when we started looking into rings. If you haven't been there, would definitely recommend. From there, he took Natalie to the Descanso Gardens. The gardens were lit up for Christmas and was beautiful. As they wandered around, Agustin stopped Natalie under this arch lit up by stars. From there he talked to her about their journey and proposed. Natalie of course said yes, and then her friends popped up from around the corner and cheered for them.