We met in health class freshman year of high school in 2010. We still disagree on how those first interactions went — one of us thinks we were friends right away, the other needed until junior year English class to figure out that the roasting was actually affection. We'll let you decide who was who.

What we know is that once the friendship took hold, it held tight. Alex would drive 45 minutes across town just to go bowling or get sushi. There were mixtapes. There was always someone to call when things got hard or funny or both. We showed up for each other at a time when being that openly kind wasn't exactly cool — and somewhere in all of that, we started becoming something more than friends, even if neither of us said it out loud yet.

In 2014 we graduated and went off to college — Alex to the University of Florida, Gabi to George Washington University in DC. We knew the friendship wouldn't end there. We stayed in touch, sent care packages across the country, and Alex made the trip up to GW twice just to visit. The peanut butter Gabi sent may or may not have been an attempt on his life. There was love in it either way.

College ended, the years passed, and we saw each other a handful of times — and every single time, it was like no time had passed at all.

Gabi had been living and traveling in a van she built with her dad, and she kept telling Alex he needed to come spend time on the road. As luck would have it, she was moving the van out to Colorado right as Alex was heading to Vail to ski — and that accidental overlap changed everything.

Something clicked on that trip. Whether it was the genuinely terrible skiing, the nonstop laughter, or the way we just fell back into each other like no time had passed — by the first night in Vail, Gabi had gone back to her van and recorded a video saying she thought she had feelings for Alex. He spent two full days falling down the mountain. He maintains that's what did it.

A few months later, Gabi invited Alex as her plus one to a wedding in North Carolina — with a plan to drive back to Colorado together in the van afterwards. The plan shifted slightly once we got to NC, when she informed him that we were now dating from the moment we left the wedding to the moment we reached Denver.

We took 30 days to make that drive.

Somewhere on that road, one of us asked — "how do you imagine our life?" The answer came back: "I can see a million and one different futures with you." In those 30 days, everything we had always been to each other became something we couldn't ignore anymore. We couldn't believe how easy it felt. We have never looked back.

In August 2025, while traveling to Brazil for Gabriela's grandmother's 90th birthday, we slipped away for a quiet night alone in Rio.

By the edge of the Lagoa, with Christ the Redeemer watching over the city, Alex asked the question that had been building for years. The next day, we celebrated surrounded by family — and in spirit, alongside Gabriela's late grandfather, Carlos Eduardo.

We light each other's candles. We make each other our best versions of ourselves. And now we're getting married at Lago Buriti in Rio de Janeiro, surrounded by the people we love most.

We hope you'll join us on April 8, 2027.