Erin: On the day of our wedding, we will have already been together for over ten years. How did we get here? Well, that’s our favorite story. 🥰 To do it justice, we have to go all the way back to Sellers Elementary, 2006. We were eight and nine years old (I know, Joshua is so old, right?) and starting our first day of fourth grade. While we didn’t hang out much back then, we played violin together, so we like to think that there was an invisible string tying us together even at that point.

Josh: At least there are some good pictures of us in a small group play where she was John Muir and I was the narrator.

Erin: The real fun began in seventh grade, because Joshua (be prepared for Joshua, Josh, and Joshu being used interchangeably) came back to California after the year that his family spent in Colorado. Let me set the scene: it was first period science on the first day of school. The teacher, Mrs. Jenkins, had the whole class line up around the room so she could assign seats by alphabetical order. I sat down first and looked around the room to see where the rest of my friends would end up. At that moment, my eyes landed on Josh and I thought, “Wow! That kid looks SO familiar…” It’s true, I had forgotten who Josh was in the year that he had been away. (In my defense, you meet a lot of new people in sixth grade. Does that make it better??)

Josh: Wait, it was so much worse than that. Our teacher had us each stand up and introduce ourselves too. As I stood, I expected audible gasps, looks of shock, thunderous applause– Josh was finally back. I uttered my name, "Josh Sambasivam" and received… nothing!! Nobody remembered me at all?!?!

Erin: Anyway, as the day progressed, we noticed that we shared our first few classes together. In third period, Honors Algebra I, with Mrs. Roselauf, we were finally sitting next to each other. More specifically, we were the last two seats in a row in the middle of the classroom. I was sitting behind Josh, so when we had to fill cards out on our intros, peering over his shoulder, nosey me noticed that it was Josh’s first year at Goddard. As seventh graders, it didn’t make any sense, so I obviously asked about it.

Josh: I said, "Dude, we already know each other! I just left for a year!!"

Erin: Embarrassed, I just said, “Oops! Sorry!” and we were basically besties from that point on.

We had four of six classes together that year, and math was very hard. I bugged Joshua for help all the time, and we would literally spend hours on the phone. First, doing homework and then messing around. We were together so often that our friends and classmates would tease us. It even got to the point where one of Josh’s friends would literally yell, “Erin, Josh loves you!” from across the lunch room. To be clear, Josh never admitted his crush to his friends, it was just that obvious.

Let’s cut to our eighth grade promotion dance— the end of the middle school chapter. At this dance, we were having a great time with our large group of friends. Toward the end of the night, Joshua was literally dragged over by his friends to ask me to dance during one of the slow songs. We were so awkward at first, that one of my friends fixed our positioning, but it was perfect. Sadly, then summer came and went, and at the start of high school we did not share any classes together. In fact, we both still remember that the only contact we had that year was one friendly wave across the quad after school one day.

Moving on from the sad times of freshman year, sophomore year brought back the classic four out of six classes together. It was math class yet again where we were reunited (thank you, Mrs. Hart!). Most importantly, we had first period math and sixth period English together, so those were always the places where I would torture Joshua with the idea of donating my extremely long hair to Locks of Love. Admittedly, seeing how much Josh cared about my hair staying long was all the appeal of repeating the idea. In fact, we talked about it so much that I actually did end up donating my hair right before the start of our junior year. I was very excited to see his reaction to the new shoulder length haircut. Walking into first period French of our junior year, his exact words were, “YOU’RE BALD!”

Josh: She was basically bald. It was a pretty sad sight.

Erin: His reaction was so genuine that we both laughed, even though he was actually mad. But I got the reaction I wanted. From there, we were basically inseparable. Walking together from class to class, even though he didn’t like walking to my locker after French.

Josh: I called our walk to math “The Stupid Route”. It was super out of the way to get to her locker and then all the way to the other side of school to our next class. I also just carried my books everywhere instead of using a locker, which was obviously stupid.

Erin: I always made a point to share my snacks with him, either granola bars or rice crackers, because I thought he only hung out with me for my food. These were one of the few moments that we’d have to talk alone, so I’d make sure to walk extra slow to savor the moments (which is definitely saying something).

By the time Homecoming rolled around in October of that school year, it was clear that there was something between us. High schoolers can’t just say that though! So I had a plan. I asked him to go to Homecoming with me as friends (everyone else in our group was going), but… he said no. However, if there is one thing you need to know about me it’s that I am persistent. I begged this boy to go to Homecoming with me for days, honestly maybe weeks.

Josh: Why would I want to go to a dance, especially just as friends? Are you aware that dances cost money?

Erin: Until finally one day in math, Waylon, a literal angel, looks up from his sketches while I was begging Josh to come to Homecoming with me, and says, “Why don’t you just go? It’ll be fun!” Josh literally said, “Wow, if League of Legends says I should go, then it’s probably a good idea. Fine, I’ll go.” That was a yes to me!

We had the best time at Homecoming, and from there on we were basically acting like a couple, but claiming to be just friends. I’m really not joking. We were holding hands and people started asking us when we started dating. It got to the point where something had to be said, so I masterminded a plan… I asked Joshu to Sadie’s, not specifying as friends this time. We once again had the best time at the dance, but still none of us said anything.

At that point, I made the decision to say something. I worked up all my courage after school on Monday, March 24, 2014. I found Josh after class and started walking with him. One problem though, our friend David was also walking with us. Poor David’s mom would always wait for him after school while he stayed back to talk with friends, so it was not too out of character for him to walk with Josh a little as he walked toward home. This day, David followed Josh probably more than half of the way back home though. Since I had already made up my mind to talk to Josh that day, there was no turning back. So I casually said, “Hey David, isn’t your mom waiting for you??” Then Josh said, “David! Your poor mom has probably been waiting half an hour!” So finally David was like, “Oh yeah, see you guys tomorrow!”

We were finally alone, but we walked in silence for a minute. Then Josh looks at me like, “Why are you still here??” So I started saying, “So we’ve been acting pretty couple-y lately, so if you don’t like me we should stop.” His verbatim response was, “Nobody ever said that!” At that point, we start talking about the idea of starting a real relationship. Toward the end Josh said, “Okay, this is your last chance. Are you sure you want to go out?” Like I said, I am perseverent, but also stubborn so there was really no way that this relationship wasn’t going to happen. So I said, “Of course!”

That’s the story of how we started dating. From that moment, we’ve had the most amazing and ten years together. We’ve grown up, laughed, cried, and everything in between. We will share a little more here—it’s impressive that you’ve even gotten this far—but we will definitely pick up the pace.

Throughout the rest of high school we really fell in love and even though we were young, we knew that what we had was special and that it needed to be protected. With that in mind, we both intentionally stayed close to home for college. Josh went to UCLA, even though he could have gone to Berkeley, and I went to UCI. Our goal was never to be more than a day’s trip away from one another. Even though we were only an hour’s drive away from each other, getting together oftentimes required herculean effort. We both excelled at our schools, Josh became a master software engineer and an icon in the Super Smash Bros community, while I really focused on research and public speaking. However, our relationship was always our first priority, so we made it work even with the distance and hectic schedules. Each day that we could see each other passed way too quickly and we would just count down the days until the next time.

After graduating from college, Josh started working at Snap, and I stayed at UCI to get my PhD in Economics. These days were stressful, because I was almost studying non-stop. Josh has always been my rock, but during these days he really took it to the next level. He would come visit me in Irvine, comfort me in my stress, and even make me laugh when I wanted to cry. At the same time, he excelled at Snap and kept his career moving forward at record pace. If you ever want to hear more about how amazing Josh is, come to me. It’s one of my favorite things to talk about.

Shortly after we started our adult lives, the pandemic happened and shut everything down, so we were doing nothing like everyone else. But in 2021, my parents’ neighbors from across the street told us that they were selling their house. At that point, we decided to buy it! This house needed a lot of work; we knew that it would not be an easy remodeling project, but we wanted to stay close to our families and we truly saw it as our forever home. We bought the house in June of 2021, but we are still waiting for the city of Glendora to let us remodel it to this day.

Okay, you made it! I think that you’re pretty much caught up, but we have honestly just scratched the surface. If you want even more detail, ask us at the wedding! 🥰