Our Story
A tale as old as time the existence of transatlantic flights.
On May 14, 2017, an Ohioan and a Californian met in Paris.
Connor Harrison was sick of his job. Still living in San Diego after college and working in a joyless and thankless finance career, he was longing for a change. So, he did what many millennials facing quarter-life-crisises do: he enrolled in grad school.
Maggie, on the other hand, was thriving. She had just finished college at the University of Cincinnati and landed a job with GE Digital. Unlike Connor, she embraced the less-meaningful, but more lucrative lifestyle that GE offered.
Despite these differences - they shared a important desire: they both wanted to travel.
Both Maggie and Connor saw this “break” before their big life events as an opportunity to go backpacking in Europe. Both booked a round trip tickets to Europe 35 days apart. Both decided to join a two week group tour of Europe. They met the first night on the tour, in Paris.
Maggie didn’t really have a plan for her remaining three weeks abroad. So, she convinced Connor’s best friend to let her join their trip. The three (new) friends went to Eastern Europe. They drank wine on the shoreline of the Vltava River. They toured castles in Vienna. They swam in the Szechenyi. It was a grand time!
But, like all trips, eventually it was time to go home. The trio ended their trip at a ruin bar in Budapest where Connor finally admitted that he had feelings for Maggie. It was an empty wish, since Maggie was about to move to California and Connor was about to move to DC, so they left their relationship at that bar in Budapest.
It was the first snowfall of 2018.
Maggie, a recent Austinite, went to Washington DC for work.
By this point, Maggie had relocated to Austin and was having a great time traveling the world “for work.” In November, she found herself in DC for work with the GE Aviation Military team. On a whim, she decided to reach out to Connor to see if he was free and wanted to hang out.
He did. They spent the entire weekend together, from brunch to walking the National Mall to visiting art museums. Their weekend of hanging out was platonic, but sparks simmered just below the surface…
On the day after Valentine’s day, Connor decided to visit Maggie in Austin.
What were those ‘sparks’ about? Connor wanted answers. So, he booked a weekend trip to Austin.
Less than six hours into their ATX reunion, Maggie and Connor decided to start dating. Officially.
After that long weekend, Connor had to return to D.C., so the two continued their relationship long distance. Luckily, they still loved to travel, which helped to shorten the distance.
They traveled a lot to visit each other. Sometimes they stayed in DC or Austin. Sometimes they traveled to new places. They took a road trips to NYC in the summer (with the AC in Connor’s car not working), hiked among glacial lakes in the Cascades, and swam with sharks in Belize.
December 2019. Less than a year into their relationship, Maggie and Connor moved to San Francisco together.
Any long-distance relationship has an end date. When Maggie got a new job at Facebook, they decided to move to San Francisco together. They packed up Connor’s Honda Civic and headed west.
Not long after moving in together, the world shut down. But, they made the most of their new home. They did DIY furniture projects. Connor learned to cook. They explored their new neighborhood. They took roadtrips up and down the California coast. And fell more in love with San Francisco, and with each other.
Then, in November 2021, the proposal(s).
Time moves faster during a global pandemic (Sample Size = 1).
Connor and Maggie talked it through (of course they did), and were delighted to find they both wanted to take the relationship to the next level by proposing to each other. Despite all his planning, Maggie got to it first, and asked Connor to marry her at Connor’s favorite spot in the city, the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.
Connor followed suit a week later (it was already on the calendar) and proposed to Maggie at a small Bed and Breakfast on an isolated stretch of the southern Oregon coast.
Now, two years later, they are so excited to celebrate their wedding in San Diego with all their friends and family.
