The following is an interview with our lovely couple from the comforts of their home, spread across many days during the months of 2025 and 2026.

How did you two meet?

Lauren:

Craigslist. KIIDDING. We met on hinge (an online dating app for the folks who are unaware of the 21st century of dating). Lauren swiped on Marcel, because he looked far too handsome, initially. Upon a second chance to swipe, she came to her senses and realized, she too was incredibly handsome. The rest is history. A brief 1.5 weeks of talking online led to a lifetime of morning coffee dates.

Marcel:

Lauren immediately felt different because she actually had things to say. If you’ve ever received a text from Lauren before you know what I’m talking about (she sends the longest texts of anyone I know). It felt like we clicked very quickly with our interests in life and I knew I wanted to meet this person. She just had a general warmth to her and an actual interest in the things I had to say. Talking to her felt very effortless in a way I hadn’t felt before.

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What was your first date like?

Marcel:

I will always remember seeing Lauren walk across the crosswalk on Monroe Center as I waited for her inside Madcap. I’ve heard from some people since then that coffee is a bad first date, but I had absolutely no idea at the time (they’re definitely wrong). Coffee is one of my favorite things in the world, so it made sense to me. We could’ve met on a park bench for all I cared, but that seemed like a bad idea. After talking for a few minutes Lauren reminded me why we were there, so we got up and ordered coffee. Two vanilla lattes (because they don’t have hazelnut syrup). We sat at the window and talked for hours. It again felt so effortless, even when we hit silence it felt so normal. I remember making Lauren laugh for the first time with some joke about paying taxes. I wish I could remember the exact joke because I’d love to tell it again. I’m so glad this was our first date experience because it is one we can relive every time we go back to Madcap downtown. We can sit at the windows and stare down the city streets and remember the first time we met.

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What were those early days like?

Marcel:

Lauren and I went on many dates in the weeks/month that followed, doing so many of the things I’d always wanted to do with someone in Grand Rapids. When I think about “Our Story” I really just think about how quickly our lives came together. We would spend many nights after work either at my apartment or Lauren’s house just continuing to get to know each other. I got less sleep than I’ve ever had in those early days driving home at 3am when I had to be up for work three hours later. Lauren likes to say I just came over one day and never left and honestly that’s pretty true. I couldn’t get enough of our time together and she never told me to go home. Now I sit here writing this two years later with a wonderful fiancée, a dog, a cat and a place to call home.

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Tell us about the proposal!

Lauren:

October 9th 2024? I think. It really wasn’t on my radar okay, I was told we were getting breakfast with Lauren (Marcel’s sister) and planned accordingly. I spent the morning sipping coffee on the front porch and reading ACOTAR, so by the time we had to leave I had left myself about 10 minutes to get ready. A typical day for me. I had been teasing Marcel for months about a proposal. He probably would have done it sooner, but I also felt some pressure to wait a socially acceptable amount of time. Engaged? In under a year? Seems a bit spontaneous.

And yet that morning I decided to not tease him. He wanted to be engaged, we had peeked at some rings, I knew the hold up was mostly on me. So that morning, I didn’t tease him. It was going to happen, I expected Fall, so no need to keep teasing.

He was on his phone a tad bit more than usual that morning. For those of you who know, know. That group chat was popping OFF. Or at least I assumed. Turns out he was coordinating a photographer in secret. Hence the beautiful photos we have of our engagement.

If you haven’t seen the photos, they’re on this page somewhere. Madcap, downtown Grand Rapids, just off the corner on the sidewalk. It was perfect. We somehow caught a surprisingly peaceful sliver of time in the city on a weekend, and the weather was lovely. Saying yes was as easy as breathing. Of course I want to spend the rest of my life living and loving the incredible human that is Marcel Anthony Meijer.

Marcel:

I thought a lot about where to propose to Lauren and almost did it on a Lake Michigan beach, but everybody does that. Ultimately I landed on the center of Grand Rapids outside of the place we first met. I wanted us to have that memory in a city I love so much and a place we could revisit at any time. It also felt fitting that the corner of the street I proposed on was the same one we looked out of Madcap’s windows at nine months earlier.

Lauren made it known that she wanted a photographer, so I made sure to get one. I’m so glad we did because it’s been really nice to see those pictures around our house. This did mean I had to take an awkward selfie with Lauren before we ran out the door to “breakfast” to send to our photographer so she could identify us. I stopped downtown the week before to scope out the perfect spot in the area around Madcap. I was very nervous Lauren would figure out what was happening that morning, but somehow she never did. She was completely surprised and everything went great. It was exactly what I was hoping for. Our fairytale story had another chapter. Also we got engaged September 8th, 2024 not October 9th…

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What’s it like living together?

Lauren:

Permanent sleep over with your best friend? It’s supposed to be great right? Well, it is. Barring the logistics of learning to share space with another human, it’s pretty great. Marcel has a way of just making spaces better, so I wasn’t really shocked when that same thing happened at home. If you’ve seen the sticky notes in our house, you’ve seen a tiny snapshot. He is so sweet, so thoughtful, so sentimental and so intentional. The definition of making a house a home should be posted under his bio. Add it to his Linkedin, because it is a full time job, a home. That is probably one of the things I appreciate most about our life together. How he has integrated himself into the home with Brooke and I, and then we’ve whittled out this new normal. This has looked like late nights playing darts in the garage with friends and family. Trash TV nights covering a range of brain rot shows that get us unnecessarily invested in people like Kody Brown and Nick Lachey. Early mornings reading on the three-season porch and Kida woo woos (barks) her demands for attention.

Marcel:

Living with Lauren has been the time of my life. I’ve also never been so busy before. Lauren is the best damn cook I’ve ever met and we’ve spent countless hours in the kitchen together. Lauren can take any list of random ingredients we have and turn it into something you want to eat. She is very creative and loves to just throw things together, why buy ranch when you can make it?

We’ve gotten into all kinds of hobbies like baking sourdough bread, gardening and playing chess. We often have a chessboard somewhere in the house now with days long games going in the background.

Our home has also been the stage for so many events and gatherings. Lauren loves to host and now so do I. We’ve had friends and family over for all kinds of things and it’s one of our favorite things to do together.

Above all, it doesn’t get much better than living with your best friend. Even if they never measure the amount of beans before making coffee in the morning.

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