Our story began when Jessica decided to go to Virginia Tech and joined Galipatia, an engineering learning community. Meanwhile, after visiting Virginia Tech in my senior year of high school, I was captivated and knew I wouldn't accept going to college anywhere else. Then everything seemed to come crashing down when COVID-19 hit and lockdown began. While Jessica got off scott-free and graduated instantly come April, I still had to continue my senior year, as planned, all the way until June.

Around May of 2020 I learned about various discord servers which were hosting the incoming freshman class. I decided to join the Galipatia discord, which I had just been accepted into, and saw a group of members playing Minecraft. I wasn't planning on playing that night, but since one of them was streaming the game I figured I would watch for a few minutes just to see what they were up to. What I had sorely forgotten though, was that when you click “Watch Stream” in Discord, it forcefully enters you into the voice chat with everyone else.

“Hi Shane!” said a cheerful voice that pierced the silence of my room. I panicked. I left the chat immediately. I sat there, face red, thinking to myself, I am a total idiot. Another week or two passed before I had the courage to join the chat again while everyone was playing, and again, almost instantly, that same cheerful voice pierced the silence again, “Hi Shane!”. I didn't know it then, but that cheerful voice was Jessica, the woman who would one day become my wife.

Over the next many weeks before school began, Jess and I became fast friends. We played together almost daily, started texting each other whenever we weren't on the game and even began playing alone instead of with our big group of friends. On August 19th, the day I arrived on the VT campus to start freshman year, we officially started dating. From that day on, we were attached at the hip and were practically inseparable. Since we had the same major, when we weren't in class together, we were doing homework together, playing games together or going out with friends. After 4-1/2 years of dating, and after starting our full time careers as engineers at the same company, we got engaged on a lovely small beach right before our Valentines Day dinner.

Now exactly 5 years later as of writing this, 2 cats later and countless memories, we count down the days until June 6th, 2026 arrives. The day we will share arm in arm, with all of you, our friends and family, as we start the rest of our lives together, as Husband and Wife.