If you know us, you may know we share a best friend - Carly Merket. For this story, we'll refer to Carly and Carlee by their last names (Merket and Ruemke, respectively). Courtney and Merket have been best friends since they met in high school in 2009. Ruemke and Merket have been best friends since about 2018, where they met at work in College Station. In 2020, Merket made a trip to Austin to spend a few days with Courtney and invited Ruemke to join them before she made her way to New Braunfels to hang out with family. (We had no idea that the story of this brief meeting of mutual friends would eventually live on a wedding website!) Fast forward to July of 2022. Merket and Ruemke were travel nurses who both just happened to find themselves in Arizona on assignment. For Merket's birthday, she rented an AirBNB for friends from all corners of her life to meet and celebrate her turning 30. We found ourselves both in attendance of this party and since we were the only two of Merket's friends who really didn't know anyone else, we clung to each other and became really good friends. Of course, Courtney was immediately obsessed. Love at second sight! Thinking she had zero chance, Courtney kept her feelings quiet and enjoyed the weekend with the group. Of course, we all had lives to return to, so we went our separate ways. Until, Ruemke sent a Snapchat friend request to Courtney, which caused Courtney to spiral into "what if" and "Merket, what does it mean??" Snapchat messages turned into text messages, which turned into phone calls and FaceTimes. Over time, we were both making trips to Arizona and to Texas and a Thanksgiving and Christmas that would have otherwise been spent alone were spent together. And somehow we got here - moving into our own home, calling everything "ours", and anxiously waiting for November 9th, 2024 to celebrate our love for each other... with you!