There are many parallels between our bride and groom, from attending college out of state to accepting their first job offers off the bat--from an electronic healthcare software company called Epic. At the quirky Madison company, Aaron was put on a more technical project, mostly to shadow and learn, around his one-year mark. The senior technical lead on the project quickly ducked out, however, and Rose was asked if she could help out. They both separately tried to decline this additional work responsibility as well, but the project lead, Si Yuan, was very convincing--or maybe the couple wasn't very good at saying no. The project was called "Happy Together", intended to increase interoperability between healthcare systems, and was the beginning of Aaron and Rose's happily-ever-after.

Before the couple was a couple, they were work colleagues in the same building and on the same medium-sized team. They both liked games and went to a few after-work boardgame sessions. There, they faced Lovecraftian horrors to varying degrees of success and, eventually, ended up knee-deep in the middle of rampaging giants. Along the way, they met #blessed Mark Harrigan and rode out an avalanche on a dwarven shield. They squabbled over support duties and was able to overcome it--and other snags--with the help of their good friend, Michael. One could say he was key to kindling their relationship.

Having studied engineering, both Aaron and Rose share a love for logic, data, and the analytical. This often results in a preference to gather sufficient data to analyze before making decisions and taking action. Their first date was a product of one such inquiry, coming out of many "hypothetical" questions regarding one's views on dancing and if, hypothetically, one might be inclined to accept a hypothetical invitation to such a hypothetical activity that might or might not be hypothetically suggested.

The bride and the groom have always been dog people, having loved their family dogs growing up. After the bride's father passed, she started looking for a dog more earnestly and settled on the Japanese Akita as a good fit for their lifestyle. Shelters and rescues all require prior breed experience as they are not recommended for first-timers, so the couple started following reputable JAI breeders in the States and got on their waitlists going years out. Almost half a year later, they caught wind that one of the founding fathers of the breed in the U.S. was retiring and needed homes for his spayed adult dogs. The couple, cautiously optimistic, made contact and drove to Chicago to visit. Only one five-year-old dog remained; she had been imported from Japan as a puppy and was very skittish and shy, evading any attempts to pet or feed her. The groom did not think they'd be traveling home with a passenger that evening, having planned to come back after deliberating, but the breeder (or was it the bride? :) ) was insistent...and the drive was long. Yuka has been a polite but sassy member of their family since.

As part of her enrichment and because she loved to sniff, Yuka was enrolled in Nose Work classes with her humans. There, they hid distinct scents among everyday items and outdoor structures for the dogs to sniff out. One Saturday morning, Yuka came trotting up to the bride with a message--a riddle written in dog perspective about a place around the house. That place had another dog note and the string of messages led the trio to all of the dog's favorite sniffing places--the car's tires to see where they've been, the oven for danger, the microwave for leftovers, a few other places, and finally, the toy box. There, a suspicious little box awaited....