Sophia and Alex met during their sophomore and junior year of high school during a very romantic game of hostage, so to be specific, they met in a Wendy's parking lot.

For the following year or so, they got to spend more time together hanging out with mutual friends and running on the cross country team. Eventually, they just sort of ended up dating in the Summer prior to Alex going off to school at the University of Georgia. Sophia had one more year of high school, during which there were many back and forth visits between Athens and Woodstock in Alex's cherished white mustang. Once Sophia finally graduated, she followed in her boyfriends' footsteps and joined as an undergraduate at the greatest University that Georgia has to offer, with the best mascot and superior college town, objectively.

During their time at UGA Sophia got better at going to sports games and Alex got better at eating brunch and sometimes going for a run. They made tons of amazing friends and got to live with some of the coolest people that Athens had to offer. In fact, they had such a good time they both decided to stay on for Masters degrees and got to graduate together in 2019. (If you do the math that means Sophia is a genius and graduated one year early, and Alex is just average, or Sophia is a try-hard and Alex is chill, pick your perspective).

Before graduating Sophia and Alex had started to dip their toes in the water of hiking and outdoor adventure. Many weekends of their last year at UGA were spent wandering around the Appalachian Trail and preparing to spend a week backpacking for spring break. After that backpacking trip, the pair decided that they wanted to have the opportunity to do more outdoor adventure in a new region of the country, so they set their sights on the Pacific Northwest. Fortunately, they were both able to find jobs in Portland, OR and decided to move out there in the Summer of 2019.

After a scouting mission post graduation, the pair secured an apartment and loaded up a U-Box to ship out at the end of June. Then, they spent a week making the cross-country drive with a fun trip to Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and even Kansas!

Once all settled in Portland, they got to enjoy all the splendor of normal adult life and the PNW until the classic 2020 global pandemic onset. So, Alex learned to make bread, and Sophia collected more plants and pajamas. Still, they were grateful for their ability to get outside and enjoy the outdoors with close friends and family. (Extra special shout out to Dylan and Jenn, the greatest Covid buddies around).

Over the next few years Sophia got to try all of the different hobbies that Alex picked up, including, but not limited to:

- Rock climbing, not a favorite

- Bread making, a favorite

- Road biking, shockingly fun

- Gravel biking, not the same as road biking, Sophia is still not convinced its a good time

- Skiing, this one took some selling, but we are now pretty invested

- Trail Running, after 8 years of trying to get Alex to run with her Sophia is confused by this one, but happy

- Foraging, until we die this is a good hobby

- Mountaineering Lite, Sophia does not want to die in an avalanche, so this might be just an "Alex hobby"

- Food & Coffee, yes this is a hobby and its the best one so its last

During their time in Portland, as Covid vaccines became widely available and restrictions started to lift, they were grateful to have tons and tons of fabulous visitors.

In 2022, Sophia and Alex decided they wanted to go on a small adventure and leave the northwest for a few months while they were in between leases and still both working remotely. They kicked off their trip by going to Oaxaca, Mexico. They had the most amazing time and ate some of the best food. During their final week they took a week off from work and went to Puerto Escondido where Alex asked Sophia if she would like to get married and she said "OF COURSE".

After they got back from Mexico they went to Philadelphia and Georgia to visit family and celebrate the holidays. Then they had a great ski season living out of various Airbnbs in Colorado, Utah, and Bend, Oregon. Once ski season came to an end and Sophia had to go back to an "in-person" job (ew), the pair landed back in Portland.

The remainder of 2023 was spent finding a house, buying said house, and moving into aforementioned house. Once feeling somewhat settled (shout out Brian and Heidi Johnson for quite literally being the most helpful moving support of all time), they finally planned a wedding. Well at the time of this writing, there will be food and a venue. That means planned right?

Mostly, they just cannot wait to spend a weekend with all the people who made "this story" possible.