Sam and Amanda were assigned to the same ethics class during their first year of medical school. One day during class, Sam presented a "hypothetical" situation about a student getting called to the guidance counselor's office for concerning doodles found in a notebook. Amanda promptly called out the story as more fact than fiction, setting a precedent for lively banter that would continue from then on.

Both artistic and distractible, Sam spent many class days doodling cartoons during the in person lectures Sam and Amanda both dutifully attended. Between lectures, Sam would often turn to Amanda a few rows back to show her his masterpieces that could be both silly and smartly critical. Years later, he would slide similar cartoons under the door to her apartment while trying to win her affection.

When it came time to study for Step 1 (an extremely important and difficult national test), Sam and Amanda spent many long days together studying on the "quiet floor" of the library, despite Amanda's often booming voice. Over this time, the two grew close and found ways to make the hours of studying more bearable. This time period is also remembered for the time a stranger tried to pull Amanda's pants up for her without warning or prompting.

After the first wave of the pandemic, Sam, Amanda, and their friends all returned to Syracuse to continue their training. While Amanda was on a particularly demanding rotation, Sam offered to make dinner for her one night so they could "catch up" after many months of not seeing each other. Amanda agreed, but it wasn't until the day of when Sam texted "Is duck with raspberry sauce ok?" that Amanda began to suspect there were more romantic motivations for this dinner. Shocked, she went anyway, and had a wonderful time.

Late summer of 2020 was one spent reveling in the company of friends we had not been able to see in a long time. For Sam and Amanda, part of this meant reuniting with their friend Brian to go antiquing, book and record shopping, and watch movies. One day, on returning to their building after such an outing, Sam told Amanda he had something he wanted to discuss with her. Amanda, in a hurry to see other friends, tried to tell him that she had to go, which resulted in him chasing her down in the parking lot to formally ask her out. Amanda gave him a solid maybe and left for her next engagement, as she was already running late.

In their early relationship, Sam and Amanda braved the 2nd wave of the COVID pandemic together. They were vaccinated just days apart from each other, around the new year, and once their boosters had time to kick in, they celebrated their first fully vaccinated day out with each other, going to places like Wendy's, Target, and Barnes and Noble, just enjoying being out in the brick and mortar stores they hadn't gone to in months.

After less than a year of dating, Sam and Amanda had an excellent adventure of their own. Driving from Queens NY to Salt Lake City UT in 2 weeks, the pair explored the southern United States together. This adventure has many memorable stories including happening upon a store owner-turned-unsolicited psychic, racing to catch the sunset at the Grand Canyon, and a hike in the desert where the two off-roaded for multiple miles in a rental Nissan Altima, did not bring enough water, and Amanda encouraging Sam on a particularly difficult dismount, helpfully stating "the worst that would happen is he would break his nose".

In the first month of their relationship, Amanda informed Sam that she would be getting a cat at some point in the future and that would be non-negotiable. Although allergic, Sam agreed to her terms and early in her intern year at the University of Rochester, Amanda got a 1 year old cat which she named Smooth Gerald. Once a shy little kitten, Smoothie grew older, she became more and more brave and today she is beloved by both Amanda and Sam.

Given that Sam was still living in Syracuse and Amanda had moved to Rochester for her residency, they transitioned to long-distance, with Sam putting in almost 12,000 miles in that first year as his schedule as a PhD student was more flexible than Amanda's intern year schedule. Over time, Amanda and Sam found new ways to keep the relationship thriving, including virtually working on the NYT crossword puzzle together.

When they were together, they took up hiking-- enjoying the solitude and quiet of nature where they had the space to fully attend to one another. They added progressively more challenging hikes until they climbed their first mountain together when visiting the Great Smokey Mountains. Mount LeConte was 11 miles round trip with an almost 3,000 ft elevation gain that took the pair about 8 hours to complete. The pair were rewarded with almost no visibility at the top or grand views because it turns out the Great Smokey Mountains were named that for a reason.

After 3 1/2 years of dating (and almost 7 years of friendship), Sam proposed to Amanda in the snow in Skaneateles, NY shortly after a heavy snowfall and a week after Amanda sustained a severe burn to her left hand. They celebrated with their families shortly after on a beautiful Easter morning at Sam's family home on Long Island. They are now thrilled to be approaching their wedding day and look forward to celebrating with you!