Love is not an easy thing to find, even if you find the right person. For Thy and Justin there is no truer statement than this. When they first met, Justin fell head over heels for his future bride to be. His own friends thought that he was crazy, but even on the first night, he knew that Thy was someone very special. In a fluorescent lit dorm room in Colorado, Justin saw the girl in the hoodie dancing out to Beyonce and felt an instant connection unlike one he had ever felt before. Thy on the other hand, was completely oblivious. She did not know that the guy dressed in a Kikkoman soy sauce shirt and flannel pajamas serenading her would be the person she would fall in love with. She started to catch on as she noticed he found every way to spend time with her until the final straw came in a Christmas card Justin had written to her. He confessed his love between poorly written lines of his poem, something even more cheesy and embarrassing than the option to serenade three entire minutes of “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt. As any smart person would, Thy kept her distance. She made it known that she didn’t see him in that way and the two decided to be friends. But things began to change as Justin stopped trying so hard and decided being himself and being friends was good enough for him. Thy started to get attracted to the person she had just rejected. She went from teeth cringing and eye rolling to soft smiles and loving eyes. She started to fall for the way he listened, the jokes he told, and the entirely new wardrobe he had brought in his second semester. Justin on the other hand, was completely oblivious. Had it been any other time, it’s unclear how the story would have played out. But low and behold, on Valentines Day in 2017, Thy confessed her feelings to him in that same dorm room they met. Justin slipped back into his old ways and told her he was in love with her and was going to marry her before their first day of being together came to a close. Perhaps it was something in the cold Colorado air or maybe the rose colored eyes she now had, but Thy surprisingly stayed despite the sea of red flags. From then on, the two became each other’s best friend. They traveled when their small budgets could afford it, they found secret spots they could call their own as they adventured around, and found resolutions when it felt like there were only problems and anxieties. The road was not always easy, but when they did have time away from the challenges, they shared memories that will last a lifetime. After years and years of Thy dropping the hint that she wanted to be proposed to, constantly bringing up stories out of the blue of friends she knew getting engaged and married, Justin was oblivious. But this time, he was only pretending to be. Rather, he had picked out an engagement ring two years into their dating and after it took almost three years to be made, and another two years hiding away at his best man’s house, he finally popped the question on June 1st, 2024. At a rose garden in Sacramento, surrounded by their close friends, and an ice blue sapphire ring in his hand, Thy was overwhelmed with many emotions but the answer was as clear as the day they met—- that she wouldn’t mind spending the rest of her life with the boy in the Kikkoman shirt. Despite the streams of joyous tears and snot, she said yes. Just when she thought she ugly cried enough, Justin found a way to get all their friends and family to surprise her and share those tears. As they enter their next chapter, the couple can only hope that the next nine years and beyond will be much like the ones that brought them here. A resilience through hard times, a best friend to make a lifetime of memories with, and adventures that remind them how much more of the world they have yet to see and life left to live together.