-Terence Trent D'Arby, "Sign Your Name"

We met way back in 2004. We were there in Phoenix at the FileMaker Developers Conference. Chad was teaching a 3-day class before the conference; Dana was one of the students. On the first day, Chad got annoyed by the sound of Dana's typing while he was teaching, and he assumed she thought she had better things to do than listen to his instruction.

During a break when students were doing exercises, he approached her and said “If you don’t want to be here, you’re free to leave.”

Seriously, that's what he said. Pretty freaking arrogant, huh? Fortunately she stayed.

During the rest of the conference, we ended up talking and became friends. It turned out we had a lot in common, from a love of rat terriers to discussing mixing as a DJ. We, and about eight or so of Chad's other students, ended up lifelong friends who would see each other every year at the conference for a "reunion".

And that’s what we remained, friends who saw each other one week a year, for 16 years.

-INXS, Never Tear Us Apart

But years passed and life happened. Almost out of the blue we discovered the Boston city boy (well, from college-town suburbs, really) and the Texas country girl (thirty-years in ritzy Scottsdale) should be more than the friends we had been. Having known each other for so long, we skipped what would be called “dating.”

There was a moment, and at that moment we knew, all of a sudden, we were in love. We knew we were each other's person. We should get married. Maybe water guns would be involved.

From that moment on it was very, very very, very clear.

Of course, at the same time… COVID (that was a terrible time, wasn't it?). Joining and maintaining two lives across 2,333 miles amidst a pandemic was, to say the least, a challenge. We racked up a a lot of American Airlines miles, and suffered a HECK of a lot of PCR tests and swabs up the nose, to merge our worlds together.

But love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

-Taylor Swift, "Paper Rings"

We are so happy to be officially joining our lives, and celebrating our love, with you: those of you – our respective family and friends – who have known us most or all of our lives, and those of you who knew us together only as friends and shared in our surprise when we became "Chad and Dana".

And now we are figuring out building a life together, on Cape Cod and in Scottsdale. It's not always Instgrammable moments, of course, but we are doing our best to live life as an adventure of love. Sometimes it's overseas, sometimes it's underwater; most often it's at home in the kitchen dancing together like no one else is watching (we admit it, we're seriously goofy).

Our wedding will be twenty years, almost to the day, since we met at that conference. So join us on the dance floor this summer and we promise not to watch (and we're sure the photographer and videographer don't have film in the camera). Help us look forward to celebrating the twentieth – and thirtieth, and fortieth, and every – anniversary of August 1st, 2024.