Almost 5 years into our friendship, Andrew and I ended up reconnecting on Tinder, the dating app. It sounds silly now, but I didn't really use Tinder for dating. I was single at the time and some friends had set it up for me. We would all hang out and just kind of swipe through matches for fun and I liked to start every conversation with a terrible pun. One day, I matched with Andrew and sent him a terrible pun:

"What do you call a pile of cats?

... a meowntain"

Instead of ending the conversation, Andrew invited me to dinner. Naively, I thought this was a friend dinner and I didn't realize it was a date until he used a terrible pick-up line on me. (No, seriously, even though I asked her to dinner *via a dating app*, she just thought we were catching up! -A)

"If you were a pirate, would you have your parrot on this shoulder, or this shoulder." While putting an arm around me.

I had what you might call a light bulb moment at that point. The next day, I ended up calling a mutual friend of ours to share the surprise and excitement, but I was headed out of the country in just a few weeks. While I was gone, we kept in touch. After I had been back for a little while Andrew called me on the phone with another classic line:

"I choose you Pikachu!" (She loves Pikachu, I thought it was cute. -A)

He asked me to be his girlfriend and we've been together ever since.

Your presence at our celebration is the best gift. Please don't feel pressure to give anything extra and thank you so much for being part of our lives.