Our story began on November 30th 2013. After a pretty important Uni presentation, to which Leo had to “dress up”, he was ready and looking forward to a night out with the ERASMUS group in Coburg.

Meanwhile, Sonja’s mom hosted a dinner for her Italian guests (part of that ERASMUS group), which Sonja attended. The Italians persuaded Sonja intensively to come along, although she wasn’t planning on going out that evening. Sonja got ready as quickly as she could and decided to go out with them.

This day would change everything for us, we feel we’ve never been apart from each other since that Friday evening in 2013.

Not long after, we would expose each other to our families. Leo felt tricked out, when Sonja casually invited him to “her brother’s dancing tournament”, just to find out on that day that literally everyone was going to be there; her mom, her dad, her sister, her dad’s spouse, the day care parents (Tageseltern), cousins, friends, everyone! It’s fair to say Leo was overwhelmed.

A month later, on March 21st, Leo asked Sonja to be “official”. However, he hadn’t realized, that according to German culture they were already official 🤷🏽‍♂️. Everyone saw them as a couple, that’s why nobody acted surprised when he shared the news, it was kind of obvious for everyone who saw them interact with each other.

Nevertheless, for Leo it was a pretty big deal, since his sister’s wedding was coming up soon and he wasn’t going to bring just a “friend”. It was also Leo’s time for a payback, now Sonja would have to meet everyone at once, and, on top of that, in Spanish!

We feel we’ve been a part of each other’s families since the beginning and this is a beautiful thing. Family is very important for us and it’s one of the many values we share.

So many years have passed, we’ve taken so many steps together and have grown to be who we are today. We learn from each other constantly, from each other’s families, have common goals and share the same values, but most importantly we truly love each other ❤️.

We’ve been lucky enough to have shared so many chapters in our lives; university, the roommate life (even though, Leo technically didn’t live in Sonja’s WG/apartment), we’ve traveled together, had a long-distance relationship, the working student phase, the first job, now living together, and many more chapters lie ahead.

After almost 4 years of doing long-distance (Bamberg-Munich), we decided to move in together and happened to pick the small Franconian city of Fürth, which was the best decision we ever made, we love it here! However, after a couple months in, our relationship was put to the test… Covid happened! Are we going to be able to stand each other during quarantine? Well, even though it was tough, we kind of managed 😅. We actually got to know each other a lot better and realized we can picture this for the rest of our lives 🥰.

On our anniversary (the official one) March 21st 2022, we decided to take the day off and do the most German activity that exists, we went for a hike in the “Fränkische Schweiz”. After taking forever to get to that “special spot” Leo had looked up online, Leo couldn’t handle the nerves anymore and improvised. After one of the snack breaks and taking advantage of the beautiful view, Leo proposed. Even though we had been together for 8 years by then, Sonja’s answer was: “Yes! But I didn’t expect this to be so quickly!”

Yes, the organization took us a little while, perhaps we enjoyed being engaged so much. In the end we managed to have a civil wedding with a small ceremony and after hardly any preparation time in October 2023 and are now very much looking forward to seeing everyone in September 2024, having a beautiful church mass, a tasty dinner and a big fat party 🤩!

We can’t wait! And are very excited to see you all!

With Love

Sonja and Leo

Photos