Our storY, written by Justin
To understand the story of Justin & Nicolle you need to back track all the way to July 28th 2013. Weighing an adorable 2 pounds, Lily Barcia (Soon to be Lily Lustig) was born and would soon be shipped to New York to be united with her new mom, Nicolle.
Very much as cupid works with shooting arrows of love; Lily was put in Nicolle’s possession to connect her with the man of her dreams by sharing the same birthday as her future husband.
Fast forward to a summer night filled with shopping center site tours, an ICSC networking event, romance and a lot of Tequila, Justin finally built up the courage to kiss Nicolle for the first time (some would say Nicolle made the first move but that’s neither here nor there).
The next several months was a mixture of a blossoming office cubical romance, covering up that office cubical romance from the powers that be and many, many canvassing trips. Things progressed quickly with Justin spending many nights learning the New Rochelle market and Nicolle learning how New York City streets work on a grid a system (She’s only lived in NY her entire life).
Justin felt his sprawling 500sf apartment was missing a certain element, that was the addition of Nicolle’s department store worth of clothes and a furry little pup (oh and Nicolle!). This lead to Justin’s third most important deal closing to-date, getting Nicolle to agree to move out of the burbs and into his oasis (or getting Nicolle to convince Mr. Barcia to agree to it.)
The next several years was spent on spontaneous trips exploring the world with trips to Auckland, New Zealand to put our wine drinking skills to the test (oh and also to make sure Amanda was brought home from her post-college rendezvous safely); touring the seas of Malolo island, Fiji & seeing how many beers the Barcia siblings could put down on a 6 hour booze cruise with the occasional snorkeling; seeing the beautiful emergency facilities in Sydney to ensure Nicolle would not go blind due to an imaginary eye scratch, which included a walk past the breathtaking Opera House, to Justin gathering every OSU fan on the boardwalk in New South Wales to help convince a local bar owner to turn off soccer to watch USC get their ass kicked by the buckeyes (24-7)!!, taking our favorite twins on their 21st birthday to Nashville to dance (on bars) to some funky country tunes, hiking the gorgeous Twin Falls in Seattle; to showing lily the luxury living of the Lowes Hotel in Miami to spend thanksgiving with the Lustig Family, driving every other weekend to see our favorite little (big) nephew Zach in D.C, going to our first Cubs game with the Lustig Siblings (eventually being blamed that we influenced B to drink himself into a blackhole) into the Greenfield Thunder 40th party, taking First & Last chair in Beaver Creek, CO (while day drinking in between with our favorite Aunt & Uncle) and seeing our favorite greenfield cousins shred up and down the mountain, to lustig family outings to OSU games in Maryland and convincing Stevie that Washington State is not actually a state (she was right, it totally is), baking in the sun on the 4th July with the Barcia family in the Hamptons while Nicolle & Justin attempted to play beach games (no wants to play with us), taking a site tour of every single neighborhood that exists in San Francisco (Mr. Lustig leaves no pavement untouched), Turning Nicolle into a diehard Buckeye fan by attending a double overtime, rushing the field after a win over that time up north at the Shoe in Columbus, to calm pool days at the Barcia’s household in Westchester.
THE PROPOSAL :
After the dust settled from all the above traveling, Justin was anxiously sitting in the JW Marriott waiting to ask his angel (yea, the Lustig’s believe in angels) to spend the rest of her life with him. As Justin awaits on one knee for Nicolle to walk through the door…..1 minute…5 minutes….15 minutes…30…minutes…45 minutes late(r) she walks in more focused on Lily than the guy sweating and wobbly on one knee. Barely able to get the words out of his mouth, POP – Nicolle opened a bottle of Champagne and began to chug (she said yes prior I believe)!
