Hold hands. That’s what you’re meant to do. Keep doing that and don’t let go. That's the secret.

In December of 2012, Alex saw Rachel's profile on a dating website. She stood out because one of her pictures was of her nearly completely hidden behind a particularly large tuba she had repaired. He saw she repaired brass musical instruments for a living, and sent her a message saying he had a trumpet with stuck valves, asking what may be wrong with it. She mentioned some possible problems, but said there's no way to be sure without seeing it (it's worth mentioning here that in the last 7 years, Rachel has seen no sign of said trumpet). They got to talking, and decided to meet up for coffee. That coffee led into Alex showing Rachel around a local gaming store, where Alex went on and on (as most of you know he does) about various tabletop games Rachel had never heard of, and then they continued on to a local bar where they discussed everything from gaming to music to aeronautical engineering to craft beer and wine to linguistics to anthropology to criminology to, possibly most importantly, star wars... Since that day(other than the two times Rachel has been out of the state/country to visit family alone), they haven't spent more than 24 hours away from each other. So let's get together to celebrate a couple starting their "official" journey, seven years in...

About a month into dating, Alex first said "I love you," but not in a traditional way. He was struggling to say the words out loud, so he posted circular Gallifreyan to Rachel's facebook wall and had her translate it. After hours of going back and forth between the image and charts of how to identify each letter, she found it said "I love you more than you can imagine." This moment is why they decided to add circular Gallifreyan at the top of this page. If you would like to translate the quote to find out what it says, you can find charts online with instructions on how to decipher it.