Our Story
Our very first picture together, taken on a starry night out in Bocas. We had just met a few hours earlier, and a few hours later we would share our first kiss after sneaking back on a boat to Palmar before jumping into the moonlit ocean for a swim.
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Lilly was travelling with her best friend, Niki, and Seba was running Palmar with his best friend, Aaron. For whatever reason, Niki first introduced Lilly to Seba as his fiancé. Seba tied a thin leaf around her finger which she wore that night. The wrapping emeralds on Lilly's engagement ring are a nod to that!
Lilly met Seba's family for the first time in Sweden, where Paul was playing soccer, and she fit right in.
Seba visited Cologne for the first time shortly after, met Lilly's family, and went to his first 1. FC Köln game. We rented a car that we named Bruce and set out on our first road trip across Southern Europe while listening to the podcast Serial.
Over the next few years, we bounced back and forth between Cologne, Berlin, Panama, and DC, with plenty of detours sprinkled in between. The constant change brought us really close together, and so we nurtured our passions in perfect company.
In the first week of March of 2020, Lilly flew home from Panama for her grandfather's funeral. One night, in the chaos of early Covid news, we decided she should cut the rest of her trip short and fly back the next day. She managed to get in through Colombia just a few hours before midnight, when borders closed for the next seven months!
Although it wasn't without some guilt, considering what was going on all over the world, we had some of the best months of our lives over the next six months with the Palmar Quarantine crew.
Over the last few years, we've been fortunate to have shared many more adventures together and deepened our connections with each other's friends and families, despite the distances involved.​​​
On a perfect November day in Bocas, Seba snuck a ring into the pocket of his swim shorts just before our regular evening walk and swim, with no one else around. Lilly claims she had a feeling it was coming, but Seba doesn't buy it.
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The next day out on a beach trip with friends, we brought some champagne to celebrate.​​
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Having first met, then fallen in love, and finally gotten engaged on Red Frog Beach, we couldn't imagine a better place to host our friends and family for the wedding.
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