Madison and Aaron always thought they had made it against all odds, but maybe it was just meant to be.

The year was 2015. Madison and Aaron were friends in high school. From the outside, it looked like a classic, saccharine American tale of a cheerleader and a football player, but if you know Aaron and Madison, you know they were far from classic.

As juniors in high school, they never imagined that ten years later they would be buying a house and getting married. What were the odds? Well, keep reading; there might be a little more to this story.

One day during their senior year, Madison was helping her mom clean out the attic and found an old photo of herself at 4 years old, posing for a group photo at JCC’s Camp Mindy in 2002. And guess who was sitting behind her all those years ago? Aaron, redheaded mop and all.

Okay, okay, I hear your thoughts now. “Well, anonymous narrator, that’s not that far-fetched. They both were little kids in South Charlotte, and they had to learn to swim somewhere.” True. It’s not as crazy as it might seem that, 14 years later, they would start dating someone they went to day camp with. But we have ten more years to get through, so keep the comments to yourself until we get to coincidence #2.

Their senior year, after only dating for a year and a half, Aaron and Madison didn’t really think it was going to last. Madison was heading to the University of South Carolina to study Nursing, and Aaron was off to Colorado State for… Landscape Design (oh man, who let him do that?). As much as they were madly in love as high school seniors, they knew their paths might separate. But chalk it up to stubbornness—neither wanted to be the one to end it. So, they didn’t. They stayed together, half a country apart.

But Aaron didn’t belong on the plains. He was cold, and whatever he was running from didn’t seem that scary after a year apart. So, with very little coaxing, Aaron transferred to Appalachian State University, where, lucky enough, his childhood friend, Koby Ellick, and his best friends from high school, Brian Appleyard and Jake Holtzer, joined forces to found the newest chapter of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. So, he was sure to get a bid.

Although close, it never felt close enough. Madison and Aaron were 4 hours apart. Needless to say, they both spent many late hours driving on I-77 just to be with each other for even one night.

They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder, but they conveniently leave out that distance also makes the mind grow crazier.

Fast forward to 2020, the year of Aaron and Madison’s graduation. I use the term graduation loosely, as a pandemic had other plans, which meant they finished college four months early. Luckily, they both had good jobs lined up, so they spent those months together, living in a frozen moment before the real world resumed. Madison accepted a challenging assignment in July 2020, starting in the COVID ICU, fresh out of Nursing school and not knowing what she had signed up for. Aaron, you guessed it, was off across the country again to build solar farms in California. Thankfully, during those lonely times and hardships, Madison met one of her closest confidants in the trenches of that ICU: Sierra.

Over the next two years, Aaron and Madison only saw each other every other weekend—52 days out of the year. If those who say distance makes the heart grow fonder are correct, then Aaron and Madison’s hearts probably couldn’t get any fonder.

One night at Madison’s grandmother Helene’s house, it was mentioned how funny it was that her grandmother had only ever known one other person with the last name Lipsitz, back in 1960 in Lebanon, PA. Hold on to your hats, folks; here’s where it gets weird. Just like Madison’s mom, Aaron’s dad happened to be born in this little hamlet in central Pennsylvania, where his father turned out to be the local rabbi. Fifty-five years before Aaron and Madison even met, his grandfather, Jerome Lipsitz, officiated the marriage of Helene and Nat, Madison’s grandparents.

Today, Madison and Aaron are getting married on the farm originally purchased by her grandfather.

At this point in the story, you’re probably thinking what we all are: “This has to be some sort of grand design.” That two people who got together as kids have some sort of strange familial tie (no, not that kind) that goes back even before their parents were born. Well, so did Aaron and Madison. They knew it was too odd to be just pure coincidence and that, in some wonderful way, their souls were always meant to be together. That’s why, together, they were able to persevere over 10 years and 10,000 miles.

Two years ago, after a moment of awakening, Aaron and Madison realized they had had enough of the absence-makes-the-heart-fonder adage and wanted to move back to Charlotte together.

Since Aaron decided it was time to make things even more official, with some scheming help from Madison’s best friend Sierra, he planned a surprise proposal in Wilmington. Although not conveyed in the many photos of that day, it was a balmy 30 degrees out, and everything went off without a hitch.

After this wonderful engagement, the past year has been a whirlwind, two new jobs, buying a new house and planning a wedding that they are both excited to share with their closest friends and family.

So please join them on September 29th 2024, to celebrate the next chapter in their grand journey.