BETTER TOGETHER
FROM FIREWORKS TO FOREVER An Aurora couple celebrates their nuptials with a beautiful backyard bash By Lisa Arnett
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ummer flings fizzle out for most, but not for Aurora residents Cathy Diaz and Xavier Garcia, both 27. They had briefly crossed paths as sophomores at Waubonsie Valley High School before Garcia transferred to Naperville North. Years later, they met at a mutual friend’s Fourth of July barbecue, and it wasn’t long before their summer romance blossomed into a serious relationship. Garcia, a writer, and Diaz, a service coordinator at Lisle nonprofit DayOne PACT, bonded over their shared love of gaming and spent their early dates playing Mario Kart and other Nintendo 64 faves from their childhood. “Instead of being forced to stare at each other across a table, [our conversation]
16 OCTOBER OCTOBER2020 2020 // NAPERVILLEMAGAZINE.COM NAPERVILLEMAGAZINE.COM
flowed naturally, and that’s how we’ve been ever since,” Garcia says. “We can do nothing together, we can do anything together, and it’ll lead into a conversation or complete silence and we will both be comfortable throughout.” After they discussed marriage as their next step, Diaz predicted a summertime proposal on their anniversary in 2019. So when Garcia proposed months earlier in January, she was caught completely off-guard. Garcia brought Diaz to her family’s church, Our Lady of Mercy in Aurora, under the guise of picking up her mother, and then popped the question right in the center aisle. “I let her walk in front of me and told her to stop and turn around and I was on one knee,” Garcia says.
