First Date: After connecting on Coffee Meets Bagel, we met up at Bodega Wine Bar in Pasadena on a random Thursday night. We talked and stayed out that night for hours despite the fact that Preeya had a 4am load-in at Huntington Beach for an event! This was the night Preeya made the regrettable mistake of side hugging Akash with only one arm at the end of the night, a mistake he has never let her forget!

Our First Photo Together: We met up with Preeya's friends Anuj and Tushar in Hollywood and crashed a stranger's Halloween house party. Craziest part of this story is that Akash bumped into a law firm colleague and we very quickly had to own up to being party crashers!

Our First Funny Face Photo: This photo began a 6-year journey of the most, silly, goofy and let's be honest, most hideous photos we have of each other.

Our First New Years: We both decided to kick off the year with an activity that would set the tone for us for the rest of the year and hopefully for years to come! We went on a hike at Runyon Canyon and the embarrassing truth is that we have never been on another hike since that day.

Our First Trip to Hogsmeade: And the first of many we've made since then! While hiking was not for us, we quickly figured out our preferred way to get our steps in. We are both amusement park junkies!

Our First Vacation Together: Can you guess the destination? And the goofy photos continue... This quick weekend getaway had some hilarious ups and downs! The entire trip started with our arrival at the AirBNB. It was a late-night arrival and upon scoping out the weekend digs, Preeya immediately discovered an infestation of roaches in the kitchen and bolted out of the place in seconds! We proceeded to find a last-minute hotel room only to wake up at the crack of dawn to hear a loud hotel staff protest outside the building, which continued throughout the entire trip! While the weekend started off rocky and we may not have had the best of sleep, we made countless memories and enjoyed some incredible first vacation highs as well.

Our First Couple's Costume: That's more like it! Preeya was so excited to hear that Akash would be onboard for a couple's costume. She finds any excuse to dress up, so Halloween is a special day for her! And Akash made the perfect Peter Pan Shadow. He was such a trooper wearing a fully enclosed body suit the whole night. We're looking forward to all the great costume ideas to come!

Our First Trip to Disneyland: ...that went terribly wrong! Being a huge fan of Disneyland, Preeya was so excited for this first trip with Akash. And even more special was that we were accompanied by Akash's best man Michael to celebrate his daughter Lila's first visit too! We showed up at Disneyland on a rainy day to find that the entire castle was under renovation, so Lila's first castle pic was the one shown here! Every ride we tried to go on was shut down until further notice. And at 11am Disneyland announced that all rides would be down indefinitely due to the weather! There was a huge line in the rain at customer service for guests attempting to get refunds, but in all the madness, Preeya found a secondary customer service location outside the park with no line and got issued new tickets with no expiration. Lila eventually got her day at Disney and so did we.

Our First Coachella: Preeya's dreams to experience the festival life finally came true! Since 2019, Akash and Preeya have been to 5 festivals and plan to attend Coachella every year for as long as they possibly can!

Our First Date Night at Hollywood Bowl: Concerts are a big part of our couple story and the Hollywood Bowl is one our favorite date night activities. We have been to several concerts throughout the years and if you look closely, you'll notice that all our engagement shots are taken at the Hollywood Bowl.

Moving In Together: We got our first apartment together and moved in on March 7th, 2020. If that date seems familiar, let us refresh your memory...

The Quarantine Begins: Exactly 6 days after we moved in, the Quarantine began, and both our companies instituted work from home indefinitely. We definitely got way more than we bargained for as we proceeded to spend 24/7 with each other for the next 2 years!

Things got weird, Akash grew a beard, and temporary insanity kicked in those first few months...

By the end of summer, we found our groove with new hobbies and activities: puzzles, forts, Dungeons & Dragons, games, reading out loud to each other, playing music, drive-in experiences, at-home date nights and AirBNB vacations were just some ways we kept our relationship thriving!

One year after the lock down we created so many unique memories with each other and our friends and family. Staycations at AirBNBs, socially distanced picnic days, outdoor movie nights, drive by birthdays and virtual weddings were a few creative ways we were able to be with the people who build us up. Without our loved ones, we couldn't be the couple we are today!

We finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel with our first vaccine. Shout out to our personal pharmacy concierge, Anuj for all the care throughout the Pandemic journey.

And just like that, our four-year anniversary. We celebrated with an incredible helicopter ride in Portland and this photo spurred a lot of questions on social media. "Engaged?...Nope!"

"Engaged now?...Nope!" Our best vacation to date in Tulum, Mexico and yet another photo that triggered a series of online inquiries.

"This is it right?" Hold your horses folks! Akash planned the most unforgettable surprise birthday weekend for Preeya at Disneyland but it wasn't the proposal. There was a proposal happening right in front of us during this photo though!

Engaged! Celebrating our 5-year anniversary with a star gazing trip to Joshua Tree, something we had talked about doing for years, Akash stealthily hid the ring in his guitar case as we packed up our truck for the camping trip. He picked the perfect night when the moon was expected to set below the horizon for a perfectly pitch-black starry night. We watched the sun set, followed by the moon. And then Akash popped the question as we laid there staring at billions of stars in the sky. Across all the stars in all the solar systems, across an infinite number of galaxies and universes, we found each other, we chose each other and now we can't wait to experience the rest of this crazy, absurd roller coaster of life together. And most importantly, we can't wait to ring in our next big milestone with you!