How It All Started
It started the way the best love stories often do — unexpectedly. When Leonard moved into a bustling seven-person flat in One Tree Hill, Auckland, neither of us could have predicted what was about to begin. Somewhere between shared kitchens and lazy weekends, a friendship quietly turned into something much more.
What We're Like Together
We are, in many ways, two sides of the same coin. Both driven, career-focused, and endlessly ambitious — but that's where the similarities start to blur. Leonard is up at the crack of dawn while I'm firmly a night owl. He arrives with a colour-coded itinerary; I arrive with a vague idea and good intentions. He plans; I wander. And somehow, it works perfectly. We balance each other out in all the right ways, and we never miss a chance to lovingly tease each other about it.
One thing we've always agreed on? Travel. For the past three years, we've been living abroad together, turning new cities into home and collecting memories along the way.
The Proposal
In true Leonard fashion, he had a plan and a goal in mind: propose somewhere I truly loved, at a time I found most magical... sunset. So when I'd been dreaming out loud about returning to Greece and exploring more of its islands, he quietly started planning.
Having already planned our summer holiday in Turkey, Leonard surprised me with a few extra days in Skopelos, a small Greek island famous for filming Mamma Mia! The Movie. This was no coincidence. A couple of years earlier, when travelling Greece, we had wanted to visit a few Greek islands — but our bank accounts had other plans. Leonard gave me a choice: which island did I want to visit more, Skopelos or Santorini? Of course, I chose Santorini. We never made it to Skopelos.
Fast forward two years, and Leonard made sure we got there. And he didn't stop at booking flights. He found a beachfront Airbnb, ensuring it was located on the side of the island where the sun sets, so that when the moment came, everything would be just right.
It was — perfectly, completely just right. As the sun dipped over the ocean, he asked me to marry him. And of course, I said yes.