a boy and a girl fell in love...and never got over it.
It all started in September 2021, when two twenty-something medical students both swiped right on Hinge. After some cheeky banter, Ruchi and Shrey exchanged numbers and met in downtown Philadelphia, where Shrey was living at the time. What was meant to be casual midweek drinks at Harp & Crown turned into a six-hour first date and the beginning of a whirlwind Covid-era romance. By the end of the night, both knew that a good thing was in the making.
Fast forward to today, Ruchi and Shrey are building their lives together in NYC. Shrey is completing his General Pediatrics residency at Northwell Health in Queens, while Ruchi is in her second year of Internal Medicine residency at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn.
In their rare and spare time, they can be found indulging in NYC food crawls, chasing happy hours, binging crime shows over masala popcorn, and bickering over parking tickets. Despite their demanding schedules, they’ve managed to travel to Colombia, Iceland, Greece, India, and Mexico—next stop is St. Lucia for their honeymoon!
Now, after years of love, laughter, and adventure, the stars have aligned for Dr. and Dr. Patel to finally make it official!
So, there they were in Greece, a destination Shrey had oddly insisted on choosing over Egypt. Before the trip, they had gone ring shopping, and Ruchi was eagerly waiting for her shiny rock. But Shrey, the master of excuses, convinced her that the ring was stuck in a typhoon in China and further delayed by a global "platinum shortage." He assured her that the ring would be waiting back in NYC just in time for their coconut ceremony.
Fast forward to Santorini, Shrey had booked a photography session for "memories," using Ruchi's PayPal account because he couldn't be bothered to make his own. On the second to last day of the trip, there she was, striking poses for the camera. And then, as she turned around mid-pose, there was Shrey, down on one knee.
And the ring? Oh, it was there, sparkling away, defying typhoons and platinum shortages. In that beautiful moment, with the stunning backdrop of Santorini, they went from being travel buddies to soon-to-be life partners.