For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with weddings. I was that little girl walking around with a table cloth on her head as a veil and making Barbie marry Ken every chance. As I grew up, my love of weddings did not diminish. I helped friends plan theirs and eventually even found a seasonal job working for a local wedding planner. Being a part of someone’s big day always made me happy. I don’t think I made it through one daddy/daughter dance without crying and sending off a message to my father saying I loved him.
So imagine just how shocked everyone was when I ran off and eloped!
My husband and I didn’t meet in the normal way. There was no chance meeting over coffee or a dating website. We actually met because of a wedding and a bad date. It was the last wedding I was working before I left for boot camp. I spent the afternoon running up and down from the reception site to the hotel lobby to get the bridal party off to the ceremony in the correct vehicles without the groom seeing the bride. I couldn’t help but notice a cute guy sitting down in the lobby as I tore through searching for the missing flower girl. Knowing how chaotic the day would be I figured it wouldn’t hurt to see if he wanted to meet for a drink after the event. Turns out he was more into ice cream and walking on the beach, but that worked for me! We ended up eating leftover wedding cake out of my purse on the lifeguard stand and talking about our expectations of the evening.
While that gentleman and I didn’t exactly see eye to eye and what we were looking for, I couldn’t help but be optimistic. He was the first date I’d had in a while and I needed that confidence boost to enter the dating pool again. So imagine my surprise when two days later I was telling the bad date story to a friend and received a text from the guy I was talking about. He wanted to introduce me to his friend! He thought that though we had been a poor match for each other, his friend and I might hit it off. Like I said, my confidence was back and I was willing to tip toe back into the shallow end of dating, so I took a chance and texted said friend.
Turns out his friend was a guy I certainly saw eye to eye with. For a week we sent text messages back and forth. I was chaperoning a church youth trip and he was about to graduate from c-school, so we were both rather busy all week. That said, we both made time to at least say good morning and have a great day before we ran off to our own events. Since I knew he’d be leaving the area within two weeks of my return, and I was off to boot camp soon anyhow, I didn’t hold back. I expressed my love of kids and disclosed my religious views early. We talked about family, work and intimacy before we’d even met face to face. While we planned a lunch date for the weekend I returned, we both anticipated it being nothing more than that. Just one lunch.
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