How we got here.

A first hello.

It was a Tuesday. Neither of us was looking for anything. Buchi was running late, Blessing was nursing the wrong coffee order, and the friend who introduced us swore afterwards that she had planned the whole thing. She had not planned the whole thing.

We talked for two hours. We could not tell you about what. Only that the room emptied out and we did not notice, and that when we finally stood up to leave we both, separately, already knew.

The years between.

There were the small things. A flat that felt like a flat for the first time. A trip to Lisbon where we got lost on purpose. The week Blessing's grandmother stayed and rearranged the kitchen, and the week Buchi's mother sent us a recipe book with one sentence in the front: this is how you feed someone you love.

There were the harder things too. The seasons that asked more of us than we knew we had. The moments when love stopped being an emotion and became a choice. We kept choosing.

Somewhere along the way we stopped saying "I" and started saying "we" without noticing.

The question.

Buchi asked. There were no candles, no skywriting, no helicopter. We were in our kitchen, both in pyjamas, and the kettle was on. Blessing said yes before the question was even finished, then laughed because she had said yes too quickly to count as a proper proposal, so Buchi asked again.

The kettle whistled. We let it.

And now.

On 12 September, we're getting married. In a garden, with the people who shaped us, with vows we wrote ourselves. We have spent years quietly preparing for this day. We do not want to spend it alone.

Come hungry. Bring something old to dance to. Save us a seat at the long table.