We are in love.

The Setting: fourth floor, the Walker building at Emerson. It was one of those tiny classrooms with a metal column that went right through the middle. The Class: spring semester research writing. The Task: peer edit your fellow man's review of some event. Ryann reviewed a concert at a jazz club all the way at the end of the red line, which he had to lobby the owners to let him into because he wasn't yet twenty-one. Allie made up a fake chinese restaurant so she didn't have to leave her dorm room. Once the class ended, we parted ways, never to see each other again until...

Allie and Ryann both ask writer Alden Jones for a letter of recommendation. Separately, they both agree to meet with her during office hours to chat. These coincidences are realized when they run into each other in the elevator. After meeting with Alden, they ride back down the elevator and make awkward chitchat about wanting to be in the honors program. It would be a real movie magic moment, except Allie's face is scorched and peeling because she's on the last leg of acutane. When they get back to their separate dorms, they continue their conversation by becoming Facebook friends and shooting a couple messages back and forth about being afraid of the future and how quickly freshman year went by. Then Ryann gets into the honors program and they don't talk for another year and a few months.

Between Spring 2012 and Summer 2013 a whole lot happened before these fated lovers would cross paths again. Ryann made sandwiches at the Paramount Cafe, Allie stacked lotion at Bath and Body Works. Ryann wheeled around cameras and graffitied a smiley face under a bridge, Allie packed loose Q-Tips in her suitcase and accidently mistook salt for parmesan cheese in Venice, Italy. Luckily, she also befriended Jake Humphrey in Italy, the Mercutio to Ryann's Romeo except he doesn't die in a duel. Fastforward to summer 2013 and Ryann is bicycling around Boston and working the IT desk in Emerson's Walker building and Allie is taking a summer writing class. She wants a snack. She goes downstairs to the fourth floor to survey the vending machine and finds a husband.

Since our final chance encounter on the fourth floor, we have had a truly "bless this mess" life. Our relationship has taken us from the cobblestone streets of Boston to the gilded fields of Iowa, to the sizzling valleys in California and back again. We have seen each other at our lowest (cough cough Allie thinking she had meningitis on their 5 year anniversary trip) and we have celebrated the highs (most notably, when Rudy came into our lives.) 10/10 relationship, would "I do" again. So if you've read this far... great. Come to our wedding and watch Ryann cry.