We first met at the beginning of law school during a home-brewing session with the Craft Beer Club, aka CBC. Funnily enough, we both remember the brewing well – we made a milk stout and sampled examples of that style of beer made by the brewery Left Hand – but have only the faintest memories of each other's presence. Neither of us gave the other a second thought until right before the start of 2L (for our well-adjusted, non-law-school friends, that’s the short hand for law school’s second of three years), when we learned that we would be leading CBC together - Tom as President and Kate as the Brewmaster.

During 2L, our paths kept crossing. Not only were we running CBC together, but we happened to choose the same elective courses and join the same law journal, where we marked up papers as editorial partners. Our CBC duties meant we spent a lot of time together – whether it was brewing (samples from that period were sometimes “challenging” to appreciate), hanging out at CBC events or sampling beer from breweries across the city. Our favorite brewery ended up being in the Long Island City/Astoria neighborhood of Queens (foreshadowing). With all this quality time we found ourselves becoming good friends. As the summer before 3L was drawing to a close, something started to click. Tom realized that his feelings for Kate were much more than those for just a good friend, and he took a leap of faith asking her out. After a fair amount of convincing, Kate ended up on the same page. Kate denies that their first date location at Peter Luger was what sealed the deal, but Tom remains convinced.

We had a great 3L together. We were the officers emeritus of CBC, which came with all of the privileges and none of the responsibilities of our previous titles. We also traveled, from hanging out with friends in the Poconos mountains of Pennsylvania, to baking hand-picked apple pies at a family farm in Vermont, to enjoying cozy fires in snow-laden Yosemite, to sipping pina coladas on the beaches of Puerto Rico. Honestly, it was a bit miraculous that we passed our 3L courses (but, we can assure you, we actually did). After graduation, we decided to study for the bar exam in Portland, Oregon. When we weren't cramming our brains full of the rules pertaining to torts, civil procedure and “various other lawyerings,” we explored the Rose City, visiting its many breweries, trying its delicious coffee, appreciating the Rose Festival and doing all things Portland. Kate told Tom that she loved him for the first time at a Portland Timbers game, one of the many reasons that team will forever have a place in his heart. In case you couldn’t tell, it was a little bit miraculous that we passed the bar (seriously, we’re lawyers).

After the bar, we took a classic bar trip, visiting both India and Thailand together (the photo on our Save-the-Date is from an elephant sanctuary near Chiangmai, Thailand), and moved back to NYC, to our beloved neighborhood of LIC/Astoria in Queens (we told you, foreshadowing!), to start our legal careers - Kate at White & Case and Tom at Goodwin Procter. One of the things that brought us together at the beginning of our relationship, our shared faith, has acted as the cornerstone to our relationship. Shortly after moving to Queens, we started attending Trinity Lutheran of LIC & Astoria, where we have found our spiritual home. We like to think Kate’s grandfather, the late Pastor Paul Fisher, would be proud.

While Tom had known for quite a while that he wanted to marry Kate, the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic gave him an even greater sense of urgency. When Kate announced she was making a trip into Manhattan to rescue her precious office plants from the long haul of COVID lockdown, Tom saw his chance. He ran to the corner bodega, bought every bouquet of roses they had and as many candles as he could carry, and ran back to our apartment. He got down on one knee in our living room and asked Kate to marry him. Kate said yes. We’re very excited to share the beginning of the next stage of our life together with each of you, the people who we hold closest to our hearts. We cannot express with words our joy to be able to celebrate this moment with you!