Many people remember 2016 for a variety of reasons: the year Rihanna released her last album, ANTI; the year that the Cavs won the NBA Finals against the Warriors; the year of the pivotal presidential election that the news cycle could not seem to take a break from; and last but not least, the year that conversations in Target aisles brought together Briana and Gurdeep.

Our love story begins under the fluorescent lighting and the polished tile floors of Target Macedonia (T-1841, IYKYK). In our red shirts, khaki pants, and oval name tags, we were two strangers working to pay for our teenage lifestyles before the $15 minimum wage. Gurdeep was in his first semester at the University of Akron, while Briana was finishing up her senior year and preparing to attend The Ohio State University the following fall.

If you ask Briana, she will tell you that the last thing she was looking for before starting college was a relationship. If you ask Gurdeep, he will tell you he just wanted a carefree start to college with his best friends. These plans came to an end when our coworker, Sarah, asked Gurdeep if he was single and informed him that Briana had a crush on him. Snapchat usernames were exchanged, snap streaks were started, and then the Target aisles came alive with conversations, laughs, and memories.

These conversations slowly started trickling out of Target aisles into a booth at Panera Bread for our first date, a movie theater for our first kiss, and even to an Arby’s parking lot, where Gurdeep shared that we were officially dating over a side of curly fries. During the summer we spent together before Briana left for OSU, we found ways to make the mundane feel like a fairytale. We would clock out of our Target shift and use our Cedar Point season pass to ride the fastest coasters, slurp down milkshakes at Steak n’ Shake, and explore the festivals that were in the area. Throughout college, we frequently drove back and forth on I-71, filling the hours between Akron and Columbus with our dreams for the future and how we would make them come true.

Those car ride dreams started coming true when Gurdeep moved to Columbus and into our first apartment on the top floor of a building with no elevator. We adopted our first kitty, Onyx, that summer and unboxed our life together while Beyoncé’s Renaissance album blared in the background. After 2 years in our apartment, we decided that our dreams could come true closer to our lovely family and friends in Cleveland, Ohio.

We’ve since bought our first home together, adopted our second kitty, Chai, and are still unboxing our life, except this time, Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving is softly serenading the living room from the soundbar.

In our 9½ years of dating, we’ve loved each other unconditionally, traveled to cities and countries, eaten a lot of amazing food, seen our favorite artists perform live, and cuddled our cats on our surprisingly still white couch. We are so excited to celebrate our wedding and start the next chapter of our lives with the people who saw us start writing this love story, and those who met us during the chapters along the way. We’re going to be Jamaican’ Me Johal soon!