Being the adventurous spirits they both are, Joe and Amanda met while cage diving with sharks off the coast of South Africa. ...okay okay fine, they actually met on Tinder. After talking for a couple of weeks, Joe and Amanda decided to take their conversations offline and met up in person at Mill House Brewing Company in Poughkeepsie NY. (You know Joe was trying to impress her when he actually ate some of the brussels sprouts). They both realized that they had found someone special with how easily the conversation flowed. Joe and Amanda both loved the open-mindedness of the other, as they dove into some pretty deep topics and didn't have to worry about being judged for being themselves. Over the next few months, Joe and Amanda spent time together hiking, hanging out in New Paltz, going to concerts, learning to rock climb, introducing Joe to loads of new restaurants and breweries, taking a trip to Amanda's family house in Walton (where a few of our current bridesmaids creeped and secretly took pictures of them together), and Joe made a valiant effort to teach Amanda how to snowboard. (She's much more skilled at watching from the Lodge bar, for the record)! As their connection evolved, Amanda and Joe took a solo trip to Walton, where she asked him to be her boyfriend on April 15, 2018. Spoiler- he said yes, as long as she could be his girlfriend as well!

Time seemed to fly after that. They said their first "I love you" at Firefly Music Festival in Delaware that June. After 2 years of dating, Amanda and Joe got their first apartment in Eddyville NY. They moved in together just a few months before the 2020 pandemic hit- and when they knew they survived that together, they could take on anything! While the world around them was heading in unknown directions, Joe and Amanda grew closer as they made the best of a tough situation. During lockdown they learned to garden, explored new cooking and baking recipes, became at-home cocktail enthusiasts, completed puzzles, rode dirt bikes, identified their neighborhood birds, had lots of campfires and kitchen dance parties, started meditating, and (most importantly) built a miniature picnic table so the neighborhood squirrels could relax while enjoying their corn. The next 3.5 years were filled with adventures of music, sunsets, costume parties, swimming, star gazing, waterfall-chasing, travels around the country to San Francisco, Florida, Lake Tahoe, Reno, Cape Cod, Cleveland, Seattle and Alaska, time with family and friends, and petting any dog they could.

On September 3, 2023 while in Orlando Florida, Joe proposed to Amanda at the happiest place on earth... CookieCon! On October 13, 2024 they will be married at City Winery in Montgomery, NY, and Joe will officially graduate from "Dough Boy" to "Baker's Man", a well-deserved title for the best cookie taste-tester Amanda could ask for!