Every great love story starts somewhere. Ours? With two unexpected matchmakers—Jenny’s mom’s high school friend and Ryan’s college roommate’s mom—having a conversation that somehow ended with, “You know who needs to meet? Them.” We’re still not sure how our names even came up, but we’re glad they did.

Enter Ryan’s college roommate’s wife, who made the bold move of starting a group text to introduce us. That’s when Ryan decided to make his first grand romantic gesture… by accidentally FaceTiming Jenny. He immediately hung up (panicking, obviously) and sent a follow-up: “Not trying to FaceTime before we’ve even met—sorry, wrong button!” Truly a modern-day prince.

We started texting, and within a week Ryan asked Jenny out. Determined to impress, he went all in with an omakase sushi experience for our very first date in February. Was it slightly over the top for two strangers? Without question. Did it work? Absolutely. Dates two, three, and four followed in quick succession, and somewhere between the FaceTime fumble and the fancy sushi, we knew this was something special.

Fast forward to November. Ryan had been secretly plotting a romantic proposal—complete with a gondola ride on the “very romantic” canals of Las Colinas (which, if you don’t know, are actually in the middle of the city… so basically Venice, if Venice had office parks). As we floated along, the gondolier handed Jenny a message in a bottle. Before even reading it, she looked at Ryan, and said, “If you are proposing to me on a g_d damn boat in Las Colinas…”

Ryan panicked for a split second but knew there was no turning back—especially since there were 30 people waiting at his sister’s house for a surprise engagement party. So he went for it… and, of course, she said yes.

And now, here we are—FaceTime fumbles, sushi dates, city gondolas, and all—ready to celebrate our big day with all of our friends and family.