Dan and Sarah meet at their mutual friends' wedding. A classic start to a lifelong romance: she's the maid of honor; he, a groomsman. He shows up late to the rehearsal dinner; she shows him up at trivia. She's intrigued to learn he's just gotten back from backpacking across Australia; he's briefly devastated to hear she'll be moving to Scotland in a month's time.

They have a wonderful couple of days celebrating with their friends before parting ways--as far as Sarah knew, never to meet again.

Dan has other plans.

He tracks down her number and sends a friendly, hinting at more-than-friendly, text--which catches her at the edge of town, about to leave cell service for her remote summer job. She panics, entirely forgets that other forms of wifi-based communication exist, and sends him...her email.

Unfazed (okay, perhaps a little fazed), Dan sends what will be the first in a long chain of messages.

During her last month in the States, Dan and Sarah go kayaking on her side of the mountains, axe throwing on his. They talk about video games and vocations, their hobbies and dreams, and how stupid they would be to jump into a long-distance relationship after a sum total of four days spent together since they'd met.

But continuing to email seems quite reasonable in the meantime.

The emails get less reasonable.

Although Sarah's exploring a new country and pursuing her master's, and Dan is working full time and planning a Europe trip of his own, they both find plenty of time to write--first every few days, then every other, then every single day, each response lengthening by a sentence, a question, a paragraph.

By the time the emails reach 1500 words, per person, per day, and the weekly video calls stretch past the eight hour mark, they decide they'd better make it official.

Dan's in Italy with a friend; Sarah's waiting tables at a small Italian restaurant in rainy Edinburgh. Both are spending way too much time on their phones. Sarah misses her bus stops constantly; Dan miraculously avoids falling into the Venetian canals as the stream of texts, emails, and calls continues.

Sarah comes home for Christmas, and they spend the break meeting the families and enjoying the miracle of real-time conversations without any server lag. Those weeks are all the confirmation they need. Just after the New Year, they exchange rings in a park near Dan's childhood home.

Dan visits Edinburgh and basks in the Scottish sun--all five minutes of it. They're busy planning their late-summer wedding, until...

Sarah gets into her dream PhD programme--in Scotland. Faced with an international move, the headache of joint visa applications from separate countries, and, let's be honest, no great enthusiasm to face the chaos of so many transitions from opposite sides of an ocean, they decide to shift a few things around.