Love can blossom anywhere and is often unexpected. That’s the case for two couples who met and fell for each other at Starbucks stores in the Philippines.

In 2013, Alvin and Deborah Rulona encountered one another for the first time at a Starbucks in Cebu, after a mutual friend provided an introduction through social media. Conversation over Frappuccino® blended beverages developed into a relationship. Three years later, Alvin, a poet, courted and proposed to Deborah with a 14-stanza poem.

“I gave her one stanza of the poem every month during our coffee dates at Starbucks,” he said. “It started on September 25, 2013, and went on for a year. After that, I never wrote her a poem again. I decided to fulfill my plan to propose to her on March 25, 2015, and created photo slides of us with each stanza of the poem in it, but now with the culminating stanza asking her to be my wife.”

A photoshoot at the Starbucks where they met preceded their wedding last year and the couple are now expecting their first child.

Breaking Away from the Group

Jorgette Aguirre and Luis Sapno were part of a study group that met regularly to prepare for board exams. One Sunday, they rendezvoused at Starbucks without the rest of the group to read and spend time together. When a Starbucks barista noticed them and extended an invitation to participate in a coffee seminar, things began to click.

“That same day I came to know that he loves to go to the movies and dreams about being Batman,” Aguirre recalled. “He also allowed me to share a laugh with him about his funny childhood antics, which I still laugh about to this day. The coffee experience loosens people up and makes them more comfortable.”

The couple attended a second coffee seminar one week later and the relationship continued to grow. Today, they are happily married.