About Us
Reena
Bride
Reena grew up in Tucson and moved to California in 2018 for graduate school. That year, she met Pierre when he joined her advisor's research lab for a ten-week internship. She now works at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, where she and Pierre moved together in 2023. Fun facts: • Reena is an ecologist who has traveled to remote parts of Central America and Africa for her research, sometimes camping out for months to study animals in the wild. (She worked on this website from Kenya!) • Reena knows French at a conversational level, having taught herself in the past few years from reading French books and practicing with Pierre and his family.
Pierre
Groom
Pierre was born in Rennes, France and grew up in the Seattle area. He went to college at the University of Washington before moving to Berkeley for his PhD in microbiology. Pierre proposed to Reena on May 7th, 2023 on Albany Bulb at the Eastshore State Park, which they had visited early in their relationship and re-visited throughout the years together. Fun facts: • The couple's relocation to Leipzig was Reena's first international move, but it was Pierre's fourth (after moving between France and the US several times as a child). • Pierre has two middle names, Michel, and Stéphane, which means he will have a five-part name when he and Reena hyphenate their last names after the wedding.