With an empty seat beside her, Sasha Ebrahimi was planning to stretch out and catch some sleep on her seven-hour in a single day flight to London by way of Reykjavik, Iceland, from Denver in April 2022. However then a flight attendant notified her that she wanted to fill the seat on the almost full flight. 

“I assumed, ‘Oh gosh, this isn’t what I needed,’” remembers Ebrahimi, 25, then a Pepperdine College graduate pupil who was taking a category in London. “However as quickly as I noticed him, I assumed, ‘That is going to be nice.'”

Daniel Gutierrez, 35, was additionally on his option to London with a stopover in Iceland when he took his seat beside Ebrahimi. He couldn’t imagine his luck when the girl beside him was the identical enticing feminine he noticed earlier on the airport.

“It’s humorous as a result of I had already seen her within the airport,” remembers Gutierrez, a community engineer at Vail Resorts who was touring with a pal. “I already thought she was lovely the primary time I noticed her. So I used to be like, ‘Now I get to take a seat for the seven-hour flight with a lovely lady.’”

For the following a number of hours, they talked continuous about their lives, hobbies and their shared curiosity in journey. This was Gutierrez’s first journey to Europe, so he was keen to collect journey suggestions from Ebrahimi, who had studied overseas in Paris and had traveled extensively inside Europe.

“We talked about locations we need to go to,” remembers Ebrahimi.

“She gave me plenty of actually nice suggestions that I utilized in travels in London and Eire as a result of she’s very well-traveled,” says Gutierrez, who ended up consuming Guinness beer in Dublin, attempting Indian meals in London and visiting a fuel station in Eire filled with U.S. President Barack Obama memorabilia due to Ebrahimi’s strategies. “Her suggestions have been nice.”

Unbeknownst to Gutierrez on the time, Ebrahimi already had a powerful feeling that Gutierrez was destined to be her husband.

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“About an hour into the flight, I mentioned to myself, ‘I’m going to marry this man,’” she remembers. “And as quickly as I acquired off the airplane, I texted my pal Claire and mentioned, ‘I simply met my husband on the airplane.’”

“I believe it was his genuineness,” she says. “He was very calm. I’m a really chaotic individual. It was simple for us to attach. And I believe that was the most important factor, like I didn’t really feel like I used to be attempting too arduous. The dialog simply flowed naturally.”

Not sleeping a wink after speaking all night time, Gutierrez and Ebrahimi exited the airplane in Reykjavik and mentioned awkward goodbyes.

“I didn’t know If I ought to hug her but or not,” says Gutierrez. “And my pal was standing there and we had simply met. I want I might have a minimum of hugged.”

Fortunately, an hour earlier than touchdown in Iceland, the duo exchanged cellphone numbers so they may stay in contact.

“I believe I mentioned one thing like, ‘Oh, give me your quantity and I’ll ship you some locations to see,’” says Ebrahimi. “That’s how I worded it. I used to be going to try this, however it was additionally a ploy.”

After spending 10 hours of her layover strolling across the metropolis of Reykjavik, visiting the landmark church Hallgrimskirkja (which overlooks town) and sampling native beer Gull, Ebrahimi finally boarded her to flight to London. 

“A few days glided by and he hadn’t texted me but — and he had my quantity too,” she remembers. “I used to be ready and ready, and certainly one of my mates was like, ‘Simply textual content him first.’ So I did. We began texting and made plans to satisfy up in Scotland on the finish of the week.”

“I used to be very nervous after I noticed his textual content,” she says. “I had butterflies, which doesn’t actually occur to me.”

They met in Edinburgh on the Royal Mile. Ebrahimi walked out of her resort and tried to cross the road, however there was an enormous crowd in entrance of her. As the group dispersed, Gutierrez appeared on the opposite facet of the road.

“It was a really cute, romantic second,” she says. “I used to be 100% p.c excited to satisfy him.”

“We had our first kiss in Edinburgh,” says Gutierrez. “Sparks have been flying.”

After spending the day collectively, they went their separate methods once more, and Ebrahimi despatched a textual content message to Gutierrez, whereas he was in Manchester, England.

“She mentioned, ‘All playing cards on the desk,’ in a textual content message,” he remembers her writing. “She was like, ‘I needed to inform you that an hour into our flight I instructed myself, ‘I need to marry this man.’”

“I felt a sudden rush of warmth in my face, like I used to be going to faint, truthfully,” he says, laughing. “I had so many butterflies and I might say some form of adrenaline. That’s a giant assertion to say to somebody you simply met, proper?”

They made plans to satisfy up once more in Amsterdam and shared their first official date within the Dutch metropolis.

“That was actually cool as a result of it wasn’t deliberate,” says Gutierrez. “It was completely spontaneous. And that’s the way it’s been ever since.”

After returning to U.S., the couple have been inseparable, finally shifting in collectively in Lone Tree, Colorado. They turned engaged in December after they traveled to Punta Cana within the Dominican Republic for Ebrahimi’s birthday.

“He shocked me with a romantic dinner on the seashore and proposed to me,” she says.

On Aug. 12, 2023, the couple will marry on the Omni Lodge in Broomfield, Colorado, with 270 friends in attendance. They plan to pay tribute to Gutierrez’s Mexican background by having a mariachi band carry out through the reception and by additionally doing the “greenback dance” and “snake dance.”

To honor Ebrahimi’s Persian heritage, the couple intends to put a number of objects that symbolize the totally different features of marriage on a big desk, together with nuts, sweet, fruit, candles, flowers, eggs and a needle and thread.

“You sit at that desk, and the ladies who’re closest to you in your life come up behind you and maintain a fabric over your head and rub two sugar cones collectively whereas the ceremony is continuing to sweeten the wedding,” she says. 

As a result of journey has introduced the couple a lot pleasure already — and introduced them collectively — they intend to make it a giant a part of their married life. They’ve additionally traveled to Napa Valley, Lake Tahoe, Georgia, South Carolina and Panama as a pair and haven’t any plans to decelerate.

“We positively see youngsters sooner or later,” says Ebrahimi, who now does contract administration for an organization within the protection business. “As quickly because the child can get a passport, we’re getting her or him on a airplane.”

She appears to be like again in marvel at how she crossed paths along with her fiancé, since she had been dwelling in Colorado Springs on the time and Gutierrez was in Denver — greater than an hour’s drive aside.

“I don’t suppose we’d have ever met one another if it wasn’t for Icelandair,” Ebrahimi says.

In recognition of the particular function the Nordic airline performed in bringing the couple collectively, Icelandair is giving them tickets to Iceland as a marriage current.