Our story starts back in 2013, when we met at Archbishop Wood High School. Although we were in different friend groups, we had mutual friends and actually spent every morning of Junior Year together because our parking spots were next to each other. We would both arrive to school way too early (anxiety), so Stas would sit in the passenger seat of my 1999 Honda Civic and tell me stories about his crazy weekends before we would walk into school together at a more reasonable time. We then started dating in our sophomore year of college. Stas had come up to Pittsburgh to visit me and be my date for my ROTC Military Ball in 2017. We did long distance (Philly to Pittsburgh) for about 2 years! During that time, I had a lot of Army commitments that made things even more complicated with traveling and little communication. Stas would write me letters because I didn’t have phone access for weeks on end. *how romantic* After 4 years of dating, we moved in together to our first apartment in Philadelphia! At this time, Stas was just starting his Real Estate Career while I went to Physical Therapy School at Temple. After I graduated in 2024, we booked an amazing trip to Europe for our best friends’ wedding and to celebrate graduating from PT school! We spent a week in Italy (Florence, Sorrento, and Capri) and then traveled to France for several days. Unbeknown to Stas, I had set up a 2-hour bike tour on the morning of our second to last day in Paris and it ended up running late. This change in plan was disrupting Stas’s surprise proposal that he had been planning for 6 months with our amazing photographer. He had been frantically messaging our photographer where to go and asking her where she was (because we got lost). Luckily, we made it to the quiet boat port directly across from the Eiffel Tower and happened to run into a woman with a large, professional-looking camera that Stas asked to casually “take our photo” in front of the Eiffel Tower. While she was snapping away some smiling pictures, Stas proposed with the most amazing ring and then we got to explore Paris for a little engagement photoshoot. We have enjoyed our 2-year engagement and have been slowly planning for an amazing wedding at Osteria filled with great food and lots of dancing. It’s absolutely crazy that this almost journey has been over a decade of our lives and that we are coming up on 9 years together. We cannot wait to celebrate with you as we enter into this next step of our lives with marriage!