Our story begins in Los Angeles, where our friend circles overlapped and we stood out in the best way—familiar strangers who colored outside the lines. Mitch was in a season of radical self-expression; Jess was planning a Malibu bachelorette and asking her favorite question: what would be different—and better?

A message arrived like a small golden key. Jess slid into Mitch’s DMs with a proposition that quietly rerouted our timelines: a professional dance performance for the party. Two simple promises followed. He would show up prepared, present, at his best. She would place her trust in that. He did; she did. The night was luminous in the way beginnings often are—no fireworks, just the feeling of a door opening. From the first moment, Jess invited Mitch beyond his comfort zone; Mitch answered by becoming a braver version of himself.

Then came the long pause of the pandemic—two lines drifting apart without losing their pull. Jess made a home in Mexico City. Mitch built a life in New York. Years later, for his birthday, he followed the thread back to CDMX and to Jessica Manley—still officially an acquaintance, unofficially an unfinished sentence.

Across two weeks, Jess—effortless mapmaker and generous hostess—introduced him to at least fifteen extraordinary people, to courtyards and cafés and conversations that felt like home. The city’s cadence matched the beat of his chest. No grand decision was needed. He simply didn’t leave.

Only then did we notice the quiet symmetry underneath: two Arizonans—she from Phoenix, he from Tucson—who never met in the desert that shaped us, finding each other farther south. We were always desert people at heart: drawn to wide horizons, honest light, and the kind of growth that happens without fanfare. In us, unspoken growth turned to intimacy; accountability became the steady fuel for a life long desired.

What followed was the slow, certain work of a conscious relationship. We agreed early that love isn’t the absence of friction but the practice of transformation. Across languages and neighborhoods and new rituals, we learned and unlearned. We told the truth, revised old stories, and chose each other again. Where one of us hesitated, the other held the door. Where one was brave, the other kept pace. Growth became our shared vow.

Now, three and a half years later, we welcome you to celebrate in our new home country. Mérida, Yucatán is where the next page opens—sun-washed stone, open doors, and a promise that has carried us from Los Angeles to here: to keep saying yes to resonance, to expansion, and to the everyday magic of becoming a “we.”