We're tying the knot!

Whenever we’re asked how we met, the most frequent response is, “We went to college together” which is true, but not really how we met. In 2012, Bryan was in his final year and Madison was a new transfer student at CalArts. Sadly, with Bryan always shackled to his animation desk and Maddie hiding in the backstage shadows of the Technical Direction department, we never met face to face as students. We’ve since discovered a long list of gallery nights, dance parties, and late-night meals at Santa Clarita’s finest 24-hour dining establishments that we were both present for at the same exact time, but we were, as they say, ships passing in the night. There’s not a ton of pride that comes with announcing to your closest friends and family that you met your lifelong partner on an app more commonly used for “smashing” than it is for love connections, but that’s the truth of it: we met on Tinder. Things were set in motion when Bryan saw Maddie’s profile picture in a “cool cat” costume from the CalArts Halloween party, and Maddie was thrilled when Bryan’s first message to her was, at the very least, more engaging than the all too common, “hey.” After a half-an-hour of awkward but none-the-less enthusiastic messaging on the app, we decided to take the plunge and become each other's first real-life and in-person Tinder date. We bonded over conversations about high school volleyball, Maddie’s recent work with Disney Imagineering, Bryan’s animation gig with Vans shoes, and the recent virus outbreak at the CalArts cafeteria. Unbeknownst to him, Bryan won Maddie’s heart by suggesting the sweetest thing he could imagine to the end the date: one last stop at House of Pies for a key-lime nightcap, and the rest was history.