As a nostalgic and a romantic, I love thinking about all the little decisions and happenstances that lead to great things. For Quinn and me, so many pieces had to come together perfectly for us to find each other in Berlin.

For example, he was one of only five students in his high school class to choose to take advanced German, prompting his interest in studying abroad in Berlin. I was seriously considering a program in Perugia, Italy, but when my parents learned that an earthquake had struck the region the previous year, that option was off the table.

After we arrived in Berlin for our semester abroad in August 2017, Quinn made some new friends in the lobby of the student housing complex. I struck up a conversation with some girls at the bus stop on the way to campus. Through these serendipitous introductions, we found our way to the same circle of friends. And on September 28, 2017, Quinn sat down next to me in the cafeteria, and we had our first conversation.

During our program-led travel week in early October, we visited Amsterdam, Utrecht, den Haag, and Brussels. Quinn and I spent the week exploring, sightseeing, and getting to know each other as friends. It was very clear very quickly that Quinn was a kind, attentive, thoughtful, and selfless guy, and it only took a couple of days of knowing him for me to start seeking him out, trying to sit next to him and talk to him every chance I got.

At the end of our travel week, once we were back in Berlin, Quinn and I went out for ice cream cones, and that was that. Within a few weeks, I was inviting him to my brother's wedding (my brother, who was not yet engaged.) Needless to say, we both knew that we'd found something special that was going to last a lot longer than our semester abroad.

From the time we returned home to the States until college graduation, I drove up and down I-85/95 on a more than regular basis. We were lucky that the distance separating us was only about three hours (and I once made it in 2 hours and 32 minutes!), though we would have made it work no matter the distance.

After college, I managed to scrap together enough remote work to support a move to the Philadelphia area to be near Caitlin, and with a few intermittent extended stays back home, Philly has become my new home. We were both blessed to be accepted to Master’s degree programs at the University of Pennsylvania right around the height of the pandemic. We moved into the city for the first time and lived a few blocks apart – another stretch that became a frequently beaten path for us. With years of long distance under our belt, seeing each other daily has been wonderful and would be impossible to give up. Caitlin makes me the best version of myself, and we’ve evolved together over the past six years, influencing each other and learning together.

I had it in mind to propose for over a year, but ultimately waited until Caitlin moved into the city again for her new job. Within a week of that move-in, I proposed on the rooftop of our building. I’ve never seen someone look as excited as she did in that moment and I’ve never felt more excited myself. That feeling is something we will hold on to leading up to the wedding and every day afterwards.