We were both college athletes at WVU & shared a weight room along with a bunch of other common areas. One morning, Alek was working out in the weight room when Marielena passed by walking to the training room. He turned around to his strength coach and said, "Who is she?! She's so beautiful, I love her". The strength coach obviously ignored him and told him to just keep doing his work. A couple of hours later, one of our best friends, Lindsay, posted a story on Snapchat of Marielena dancing in the locker room. For Alek, this was a huge coincidence since he had never seen her before and now he saw her twice in one day. He obviously swiped up on the story and asked who she was and got all of Mar's info. We kept seeing each other in the weight room for the next several days, and after a couple days of him realizing the weight room was not the ideal place to meet & have a conversation, he slid into the dm's. The rest is history!
We got engaged on New Year's Eve. We had everybody in town from both sides of the family and we thought it was the perfect occasion to host a party. For Marielena, it was just a New Year's Eve party, but for everybody else, it was an engagement party. When the ball dropped at midnight, we had a firework show which everybody seemed to enjoy. Alek had a 6-minute firework show to work with and make sure everything went perfectly to be able to pop the question once the firework show was done. We stood very close to the fireworks to be able to see them clearly. After the 6-minute show, Alek got on a knee and asked the question in front of all of our friends and family. Needless to say, it's the best New Year's Eve we've ever had.