Lexi and Eli met during their first year at Harvard in a large humanities lecture. While Lexi promptly raised her hand to answer every question, Eli lingered in the back of the hall, admiring the back of her head while wrestling with the writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
After Eli declined to continue with the second semester of the humanities class, their paths diverged briefly. Lexi delved into philosophy and campus politics, while Eli charted his course in history (and literature). But a year later, keeping his eye on the prize, Eli shamelessly flirted with Lexi while trying to join the college magazine she ran. He was invited to join the magazine...barely.
Despite the lecture hall stare downs and long office hour chats, it took two years (and some pushes from their friend, Reid) for Eli to work up the courage to ask Lexi out for an afternoon walk along the Charles River in September 2019. The quick walk ended up lasting nearly 3 hours, featuring a vigorous cross-examination of Lexi's philosophical leanings -- the first of many.
The ensuing fall and early winter was a classic whirlwind romance, featuring a Steely Dan concert, impromptu surprise trips to the White Mountains, overpriced Boston area restaurants, a long weekend in London, and many more long walks until the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic brought uncertainty.
Faced with the prospect of significant time apart after being removed from campus, Eli and Lexi opted instead to quarantine together after dating for 5 months -- not realizing that they would never live apart again after that day. Their quarantine brought them across the country together, spending months of the pandemic living in Arizona, New Mexico, Massachusetts, and Vermont as they rounded out their senior years and graduated from Harvard College in May 2021.
After graduation (and some wonderful weeks in Sicily), the pair packed up a U-Haul and they [Lexi] drove cross-country to begin their careers and continue their lives together in Chicago.
After buckling down for their first freezing winter (fueled by good company and the Chicago restaurant scene), Eli and Lexi built a home in Chicago and became fierce advocates of Midwestern living (to the dismay of their Northeastern friends).
Despite their love Chicago (especially from May to October), Lexi and Eli still found themselves itching for adventure, traveling to Peru, the Netherlands, the south of France, Utah, Colorado, Florida, and Mexico in their first year in the city. It was a period of self-discovery. Lexi realized she couldn't imagine her life without Eli, and Eli realized in a Florida drugstore that he could, in fact, eat dairy -- and wanted to marry her.
After a long spring and summer of working with a pushy Italian jeweler, Eli proposed on September 9, 2023, on the tail end of an hour-long conversation about J.D. Salinger, featuring Lexi perplexed as to why she was told to wear heels to a picnic. The excitement and surprise continued at dinner, when Lexi was shocked to find that Eli had coordinated both of their families to travel to Chicago and celebrate that evening at a hot Chicago steakhouse.
The adventure has continued, with the two spending two months in winter 2025 exploring New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, and Thailand. They cannot wait to embark on their most important journey yet with you in Mexico in May 2025.