“I met Lennard on May 24th, 2009 at de Kring in Amsterdam. During that time, I was a student at the University of Amsterdam and Lennard was living in Rotterdam, studying and working on his business.
The night we met, Lennard asked me to come with him and his friends (Johanna and Jurian) to the beach the following morning... The invitation sounded tempting, but I wasn’t sure I’d wanted to go out with a guy I had recently thrown out of the ladies’ room... Due to Lennard’s highly persuasive character, before I knew it, I was already in the car with his friends driving towards the beach. The 4 of us had an awesome time that day. ”

“In the spring of 2010 -after Manu had finished her Master, and an internship at Ahold - she moved in with Anton, Niko and me at our awesome apartment in Rotterdam... It was great living together there for a while before moving to Amsterdam..”

“Start spreading the news
I am leaving today
I want to be a part of it
New York, New York”…

...only that I thought I’d be a part of Geneva. Lennard and I had planned to go to Geneva to celebrate our 4 and a half year anniversary. All packed, at Schiphol I found out my super beautiful surprise. Never in my life had I rushed so happily to get to a gate, while not being able to hold my enthusiasm. I was finally going to New York. It had always been a dream of mine. And I was extra happy knowing we were going to celebrate our 4 and a half years anniversary there.

I won’t go through all the details as I’m unsure how tolerant you are to highly romantic writing ;) but I will say that everything was absolutely beautiful. Lennard proposed on Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center on December 6th 2013, on our favourite song - Paper Aeroplane. I couldn’t resist his charm and said a happy Yes! ;) (this explains the reasoning behind this website ;))
The Empire State Building was beautifully lit behind us, in the colours of South African flag, in the living memory of Nelson Mandela.

For the proposal, a bunch of dear friends gave Lennard a hand with organizing everything so flawlessly. Among them: Ruxy and Todd, Colleen, Erick, Will and Mario. After the emotional moments on Top of the Rock, on our way down from the tower I was in for another big surprise. Our friends living in New York were waiting for us downstairs with balloons and flowers, ready to celebrate our engagement. By that time, I was already overwhelmed with emotions and the chain of beautiful surprises. In between tears of joy, I managed to call my parents and to talk to my girlfriends back home as well (Lore, Ste, Kay and Ana). It looked like Lennard had already informed my girlfriends that he was going to propose, and he had also asked my father for his blessing in advance, which made me feel even prouder of Lennard’s outstanding care and perfect organising skills.

That night we celebrated with our friends and I recall Lennard being immensely happy, like I had never seen him before. ”

“Post engagement, we’re super busy with our work, our social lives, our hobbies and above all... the wedding planning. We can’t wait to celebrate with you in August. ”

“A couple of months later, Johanna and Dennis invited us to come along on a boating trip between the Greek Islands and Turkish Coast. This was also our first holiday together. I remember Manu applying generous amounts of sun lotion (on me), and all of us being quite seasick due to the heavy weather. However, getting to know Manu in a totally different setting, was great. ”

“One day I filled in one of those online questionnaires about “what is your power animal?”. The result was a Bear and, most of all, the description was so accurate that, before we knew it, we were already making jokes about my being a Bear. Lennard was convinced his power animal was a Tibetan Fox. I don’t recall when it all became so ‘present’, but when it’s just the two of us, we always call each other Fox and Bear. ”

“Some time after moving to our new house on the canals in Amsterdam, we received an unexpected and hairy family member! We named her Franka... She is now grown up and has a successful career as a wedding planner ;) ”