I love telling our “how we met” story, because if you don’t know us, it’s pretty unexpected. And, if you do know us, well, our beginnings make a lot of sense.

We met three years ago in Guatemala City, both having traveled there for a photography workshop. My first impression of Justin was that he was a skinny hipster. (You’ll have to ask him what his first impression of me was.)

On (what we now realize was our first date) we climbed an active volcano just outside of Antigua. At the top we roasted marshmallows on the volcano’s natural heat sources and felt like we were on a completely new planet. On the way down, distracted by taking pictures and pausing to climb trees, we got momentarily separated from the group and started practicing, in our very limited Spanish vocabulary, the phrases we might need to get a ride back into town. Eventually, we found our bus back.

Afterwards, covered in dirt, we went out for dinner.

A few months later, on a camping trip in Pennsylvania, Justin broke his T-12 vertebrae and severed his spinal cord incompletely. After being life flighted to a hospital, a seven-hour surgery, and a week in the ICU, we both felt the intensity and realness of our relationship. (I’ve written previously for IFF about how I processed praying for Justin, when our faiths were so different.) The next few months I traveled back and forth between Boston and the rehabilitation hospital in Philadelphia where he was recovering.

These days we live just outside of Boston in Salem, Massachusetts. We’re both photographers, and I’m part of the communications team at Keshet. Our day-to-day life of marathoning TV shows, looking for photography work, and teaching ourselves how to cook is punctuated by weekend adventures—it’s not abnormal for me to go into work on a Monday and answer the question of “what did you do this weekend” with “we ended up in the middle of New Hampshire and met some people who were ice fishing in the middle of a frozen lake…”

Our proposal story is the flip side of how we met—but, much like our first date, it makes complete sense if you know us.

There was no big romantic moment, but a long discussion. After several years of dating we knew how we felt about each other—the question was more how we felt about marriage. In many ways, deciding to get married made a lot of sense. In other ways, it was more of a stretch. We went back and forth about wedding hypotheticals and what would be important to each other. For me, having a Jewish ceremony was the most meaningful part of taking our commitment to the next level. For him, having a large gathering where all of our family and friends could be part of a celebration was essential.

Our decision to get married was just that—a joint, mutual decision. We both asked each other, we both agreed. We kept the news to ourselves for a while, just to see how it felt. A few weeks later we got a ring from my family, and we made it official. And, we’ve set a date: 9.26.15.

We’re pretty excited to share our story with IFF’s Wedding Blog. Storytelling—with photos and with words—is a big part of who we are. We’ll be navigating how to put together a ceremony that feels comfortable and right for my Judaism, appropriate to Justin’s secular belief, and understandable for all of our guests. We’re trying to plan something on a modest budget, and we’re hoping to do so without going crazy. I’m sure there will be some surprises along the way, but right now we’re looking forward to our next adventure.