We met on our first day of grad school in 2013. Joe had just completed two years of Peace Corps service in Zambia and Roxy had just completed two years of service as an AmeriCorps member with Habitat for Humanity in Minnesota. We both share passions for community service and lifelong learning, which brought us together in the graduate study Trinity Fellows Program at Marquette University. Joe studied Educational Policy and Roxy studied Marketing and Communications. We hit it off early on with shared memories of Oktoberfest in La Crosse, WI, a fondness for pizza and beer on a Thursday night and a “secret” relationship that turns out all of our friends knew about.

During our two years together in grad school, we established roots in the Milwaukee community and shared many laughs and adventures with our cohort. Highlights include brewery tours, Brewers tailgates, winter cabining, parking lot grill outs and tubing on lazy rivers.

Family means everything to us and we are thrilled that both sides of our families live nearby. With the Kaltenberg crew, we enjoy summer vacations at the Kaltenberg cabin, golf outings, paddle boarding and going for pontoon rides, playing Play Nine, eating eggnog pie, doing yoga together and helping out with house projects at each other's houses.

We bought our first house together on the east side of Milwaukee. While living here for 3.5 years, we learned a lot about what we do and don’t like in a house. We accomplished some major house renovations while living at this house, including a full kitchen and full bath remodel. We created many memories in this house, including weekends with nephews, hosting Katiri's bachelorette party here, countless backyard campfires with friends and endless weekends doing house projects with the help of both our families. While perhaps not fondly memorable, we also experienced several bizarre moments in this house while living next to a Little Caesar's and had several unsavory encounters with skunks, decaying squirrels in the attic and the discovery of a raccoon latrine on our garage.

We adopted Rufus from the Wisconsin Humane Society and life hasn't been the same since. While converting Roxy from a cat person to a dog person, we've enjoyed daily walks, trips to the Roverwest dog park, road trips to see family and snuggles with our best boy.

With the Helmeid family, we enjoy walking our dogs together, hosting monthly family dinners, drinking banana mamas, painting every room in our houses, holding Hamilton watch parties and getting together with the Roach clan.

With the Pitts family, we enjoy staying at Susan's cabin(s), paddle boarding on Loon lake, stopping at local cheese stores and air frying copious amounts of cheese curds, grilling out and working on house projects together.

Throughout our eight years together, we have gotten to go on some pretty amazing vacations. After grad school, we took our first big trip together to go backpacking in the Great Smoky Mountains. Joe introduced Roxy to camping and we've enjoyed the outdoors together ever since. Since then, we've hiked through Mammoth Cave, Congaree National Park and Saguaro National Park, and backpacked in Teddy Roosevelt National Park and Glacier National Park. We hope to explore more national parks with our families and have considered several national parks for our honeymoon.

Joe proposed on Roxy’s birthday while on a hike in Lion’s Den in Grafton, WI. Neither of us remember what was actually said during the proposal, but regardless the moment was special and felt very much like “us.” After our hike, we were able to call loved ones and surprise most of Roxy's family in person with the news, making it a very memorable day.

We closed on a 650 square foot house in Riverwest, Milwaukee. Throughout the summer, we are renovating the entire house into our dream home in time to get married in the front yard in October. We couldn't think of a better way to tie the knot than in this spot where we've already committed to building this home and our future together.