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June 14, 2025
Columbus, OH

Alisa & Derek's Wedding

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Derek Sasthav

and

Alisa Noll

June 14, 2025

Columbus, OH
134 days134 d5 hours5 h43 minutes43 min30 seconds30 s

From lab partners to life partners

Our Story as told by Derek + ChatGPT

On a sun-dappled morning of 2013, Derek stepped into his first engineering class at The Ohio State University. When he met his lab partner, Alisa, you could say she had him at "Hello World". "Hi, I'm Derek," he ventured, his voice a mix of hope and trepidation. Alisa, with a gaze as sharp as her intellect, asked in reply, "How much do you know about big data?" "Um, not much. It's our first day, after all," Derek stammered, a sheepish grin spreading across his face. She turned to her friends and burst into laughter, rejecting him like a null hypothesis. Embarrassed but determined, he made a silent vow amidst the clattering of keyboards and the hum of data servers: He would master the language of data. In the whirlwind of semesters that followed, Derek lived and breathed data analytics. He found beauty in numbers and patterns where others saw only chaos. He traded parties for pivot tables, social gatherings for statistics. Junior year arrived, bringing with it the chance for Derek to showcase his newfound prowess. The Big Data and Analytics Association announced its presidential election. Derek ran a campaign as precise and compelling as his models, winning the presidency with a landslide of votes. Alisa, equally brilliant, became his vice president. After crunching the numbers, Alisa realized that Derek's steel-toed boots and sweatpants were the perfect MATCH() to her INDEX(). On Valentine's Day 2016, under the soft glow of lab lights, Derek presented Alisa with a heart-shaped scatter plot, each data point a moment they shared, each axis a testament to their growing bond. Since then, the two have unraveled the complex code of life together, living in Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle. They love to travel, play pickleball, listen to Harry Potter audiobooks, and enjoy rounds of Code Names with friends. Outside of their jobs in tech, Alisa runs a microfinance nonprofit and Derek teaches machine learning. Both serve on advisory boards in the OSU engineering department and are passionate about clean energy. On August 19, 2023, Derek proposed to Alisa according to the calendar invite she sent him the year prior (see below). They look forward to exchanging their vows in the place where their story began: their cherished alma mater. "In a world ruled by data and logic, love remains the most beautiful anomaly." - Chat GPT. Thank you for celebrating this special day with us!

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For all the days along the way
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