His Story:

I had the most epic Vegas trip planned for my buddies 30th birthday and the day I was supposed to fly out they announced my flight had been canceled and that Vegas was shut down! Of course everyone is thinking if Vegas is shutting down then this Coronavirus thing must be a real issue! So sad and recovering from FOMO that night I decided to start the swiping. I claim myself to be the luckiest man ever to live because I match with Nisha that very night! We started to talk about who we were and how crazy it was that we were experiencing a pandemic and what we would do for this “2 week shutdown”! After a few nights of talking I asked if she would want to watch a movie with me virtually. Netflix has come out with Netflix Party where you can watch the same thing as someone else at the same time and chat on the side. I ended up having to facetime her to show her how to install the plugin and even tried to see her face smile but she was comfy in her bed and didn't want me to see her for the first time like that haha. 

We then decided to send each other our favorite meals from our favorite places at the time since we were still in this 2 week lockdown phase. Little did she know I was going to be the delivery man and dropped off some flowers and food and champagne! The shock and smile on her face could have been seen from the moon when she saw me in the car as the delivery driver! After that we decided to make our favorite dishes and swap for a facetime date night! I made a meal for her and her mom since her dad was stuck in Panama with the pandemic. After that it was history!! I came over and set up in the backyard a tv I brought with my computer and two separate blankets to stay 6 feet apart and finally told her I'm going to hug you because I know you're the one. Ok I didn't say that but I thought it!! I told her I like you a lot and willing to hug you and bathe myself in hand sanitizer if need be haha.

From then on it was as if we had known each other our entire lives and every moment we spent together was something one could only dream of. I still pinch myself to this day to make sure I'm not dreaming when I see how beautiful she is. Mowgli and Darla loved each other and once we saw they had big hearts for one another we knew it was destiny! If you would have told my teenager self I would be proposing in Paris and getting married in Lake Como I would have told you there's no way I get that lucky. But here I am the luckiest man in the world and the happiest to be able to call Nisha my wife after we share a fairytale week in the beautiful Lake Como!

Her Story:

Left swipe, left swipe, right swap… MATCH! I remember matching with Mustafa on the dating app Bumble the first official locked down weekend of Covid-19, back when everyone was still under the impression that what we now know as a major global pandemic was only going to last a couple of weeks. At the time I was just laid off from my then job and was living at home. My dad was trapped in Panama so it was just me and my mom and now my new friend Mustafa. We texted for two weeks before he asked me on our first “date”. His idea was to have us each order our favorite meals from our favorite restaurants for the other person and have it delivered. When I went outside to pick up my delivered meal on the driveway there was takeout Din Tai Fung (YUM!), a bottle of champagne (Major YUM!), a dozen roses AND MUSTAFA WAITING IN HIS CAR for me to notice him with a huge smile on his face. I was just expecting the delivery guy and SHOCKED to see him. I ran inside giddy with butterflies barely able to tell my mom what had just happened. Was this man too good to be true or had I just been locked inside two weeks too long?!

Little did I know at the time that this is the way Mustafa did everything in his life: grand, surprising, over-the-top romantic gestures that swept me off my feet every time.  Whether he was bringing over and setting up a full on movie night in my parents backyard for our second date, cooking me my mom and our pups a shrimp linguine dinner for our third date, ordering top of the line camping gear when I suggested “Maybe we should go camping…” (only to realize we had left it all at home when we arrived to the campsite!) or planning a surprise two week trip to Paris and London.  Flash forward and 2 years later we’ve moved into a new place together, gotten new jobs together, adopted each other's dogs, added two turtles to the Fermawi Farm (shoutout to Antonia and Fabi), met and have spent time with each other's families and friends, and traveled to and attended 25+ weddings. I could spend hours reliving and listing off all the times I’ve felt overwhelmed with gratitude for the happiness, adventure, support, patience, kindness and love this man has brought into my life but then I would have nothing left for my vows… so stay tuned!

We both had a situation of stacked up vacation time at work of use it or lose it so we decided to take 18 days off during the 2021 holidays! In that instant I knew I was going to propose. We were supposed to go to Panama but ticket prices were not looking as normal to get there. Then I decided to book 18 days on Lake Como so Nisha could work on her new collection and then learned that the lake would be freezing and who would want to go to Lake Como and not be in the water?! So after some research and thinking I decided to plan 9 days in London and 9 days in Paris and take the Eurostar between them! I told her that this was going to be a surprise trip and I would just give her hints and tell her how to pack. I start to give her little toys like a toy Delta plane and a toy train. As she and her friends tried to guess every little place in the world it would be it came to the night before we were supposed to leave. As the crazy planner I am, I was monitoring the world with the pandemic and 8 hours before we were supposed to board a plane to London they announced a ban on travel between the UK and France because they were feuding over how to handle the pandemic. You could imagine how a big planner like myself would start to freak out thinking every little reservation, covid test, museums, her birthday was now voided because we would not be able to go to both. Luckily I found a loophole to be able to travel between the 2 countries but that would mean I would need to cancel our flights and rebook an international trip for 2 within the next 6 hours. We flew to Paris with nowhere to stay as I was on the phone nonstop in the JFK airport trying to move every little thing I had planned. I had planned to propose a week into the trip but that had changed to be done much sooner because I knew where I wanted to do it! I was ready to propose with no photographer since he could not accommodate a last minute date change and the night before I was going to propose he messages me that he was going to make it and after that moment I knew no matter what the rest of the trip held that there was nothing that was going to go wrong in our eyes. 

Let me set the scene. I told her that she needed to pack 3 amazing outfits for 2 dinners and 1 breakfast all at the 3 most exclusive places in their countries since she had no idea where we were going yet. Little did she know that I was going to propose at 7am and there was no breakfast! We both get up while it is dark in the wee hours of the morning to get ready. She asked me how I look and all I could think was wow she is beautiful and she is going to shine so bright in this moment. As we walked down this bridge I banked on her wanting to take a selfie with the beautiful view of the eiffel tower and she did! We took some pictures as this professional photographer is near and I asked if he would take one of us and he said yes. He started telling us to act natural and we were in Paris and to just smile and then I put my arms around Nisha and told her words that I knew would be the last ones as boyfriend and girlfriend. I got on one knee and her whole soul lit up as if she brought the sunrise to the world that morning!