Wedding Day

David's Star Lutheran Church

Ceremony

The Florian Event Venue

Cocktail Hour

Reception

Our Wedding

Right after the celebration of the New Year in 2024, Laura decided to resurrect her Hinge profile. She ended up seeing Nate's profile, and they matched on January 9th. Their first date was on January 13th at a sandwich place called McAlister's. It was absolutely freezing outside, but Nate, being the gentleman that he is, waited outside to greet Laura. Afterwards, Laura was talking to her best friend Connor about how she thought the date went well and wondered if Nate would ask her out again. She checked her phone and actually had a message from Nate already, asking to see her again! From there, they started to go out more (and even see each other by chance on Purdue's campus from time to time). Then on March 9th, 2024, they became official! They found time to hang out every few days, usually staying in to watch Brooklyn 99 or Rings of Power and play cribbage. Nate picked up a few of Laura's hobbies like playing Mario Party and going to her band concerts, and Laura ended up getting invested in watching Purdue basketball with Nate.

Then in May, Nate had the huge accomplishment of graduating from Purdue with his B.S. in Multidisciplinary Engineering and starting full-time at his job as an acoustic engineer. However, that meant that Nate moved an hour away. On top of that, Laura left for a 2.5 week trip to Australia for a research conference and vacation. Even being thousands of miles away and in vastly different time zones, they were still able to talk a little bit every day. Even though Laura made lots of great connections at the conference (mainly because of her award winning Wizard of Oz themed research presentation) and was merely minutes from a beautiful beach, she still missed Nate quite a bit. At least after the conference, Connor joined her for vacation, so she had lots of fun things to keep her busy, like visiting the Australia Zoo, going scuba diving, and visiting the Sydney Opera House. For Nate, distance did indeed make the heart grow fonder, realizing after Laura left that he loved her. At least he had work and Laura's plants to keep him busy for a while.

After a very jet-lagged Laura returned to the US, Nate picked her up from the airport and they had a very joyful reunion. However, the following week, Laura had to leave once again for a research conference in Pittsburgh. After seeing Nate once again, leaving him for a few days was incredibly difficult. After making the 6 hour drive out there, Laura realized that she loved Nate and it took a huge amount of willpower not to tell him over the phone right away. So as soon as she got back, she told Nate she loved him and he told her the same. From there they had a wonderful rest of the year, going kayaking at Geist, going to see the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, hiking at Turkey Run, visiting farmers markets, visiting family, and judging all of the weird clothes they saw at the mall. They of course had fun staying in as well, whether it was watching overly dramatic reality shows, cheering on Purdue volleyball or basketball from the couch, battling it out on Mario Kart 64, or assembling Lego sets together.

The next relationship milestone for Laura and Nate happened at Sanford Family Christmas on January 27th, 2024. Nate brought his new Family Feud game to the party to play. Laura played the role of Steve Harvey, asking all of the questions. At the end of the game, Nate's team elected him to do the speed round questions. Nate answered all of the questions quickly until Laura read the last question: "What is the hardest thing to say to someone?" then Nate answered, "Will you marry me?" and Laura said yes! Of course, it was all fun and games, but that is the first time that Nate proposed. Fast-forward 4 months to April 27th. Laura and Nate decided to go to a local park called Celery Bog to see if they could find any ducks (because they're very cute). They did, in fact, see a cute little family of ducks at one of the docks. They made their way to the other dock to see if they could find more. There were no more ducks, but there was a great blue heron and a boatload of turtles! Laura turned back around from looking at the turtles to see Nate waiting to propose to her. She immediately said yes and was joined by Nate's sister Maddie and her friend who were secretly taking pictures.

Nate and Laura continue to fall in love more every day and cannot wait to get married!

Our Story

Photos

Molly Griebenow

Benjamin Wachnicki

Hannah Woods

Regan Overman

Connor Rehbein

Jack Sells

Hannah Kleyn

Zach Kleyn

Wedding Party

Q + A

If you require additional accommodations or nights, please reach out to the hotel for your stay. If the hotel block is full when you make a reservation, reach out to the hotel with our code (BA77K3) for your room to be added to our block for a discounted rate.

Laura & Nate

Laura & Nate

Registry