It was August of 2013. "Lee Daniels' The Butler" was the #1 movie in America (a fact we just found out while typing this), Pharrell Williams' "Happy" was soon to be the hit song that no one could escape and, most importantly, AJ Wagner and Anna Zastrow met in their first year at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

We immediately became friends, sharing many of the same classes (big thanks to alphabetical class assignments!) and hobbies like hanging out with friends, watching nostalgic movies and playing Mario Kart; by the start of our third year we were pretty much inseparable. We started dating in the Fall of 2015 and everything changed...well, actually, not much changed except now we held hands and would let each other win in Mario Kart, sometimes.

When the time came to graduate in 2017, we had a decision to make. Our lives up until then had been on the East coast, but our life ahead was calling us to the West. A few months later we found ourselves in a new and busy city. Excited and a little nervous, we started our new life together knowing that no matter what we faced, we loved each other and would face it together.

We'll have been dating 8 years by the time our wedding comes. We've spent nearly a third of our lives together and we couldn't imagine not spending the rest of our lives the same way.

Also together we have two good orange cats named Wendell & Winston and we love them so much. Not much more to say there, but they needed to be mentioned.