Anniversary Week: Our Story, Part I

I’m excited to share that this week is a special week and so is going to be quite different than usual!

Coming up on May 11 is my and my husband’s 2^nd anniversary! Don’t ask me how we’ve already reached that milestone, but I’m thinking it went by in a whirlwind of doctor appointments, honestly.

But in honor of the upcoming occasion, I want to spend this week (yep, the whole week) sharing details about how we met and our wedding because, first of all, I haven’t done that yet and, secondly, because I think it’s quite a lovely story myself. ;)

So here we go! :)

Before I tell you how Daniel and I met, I need to tell you about meeting his sisters. (It’ll make sense soon, just follow me here…) I headed off to college in South Carolina in the fall of 2006, and at that college we have societies, like sororities, that you choose from to join as little freshmen. In the society I joined was the sweetest girl, a couple years older than me, who rather took me under her wing and was just all around so sweet to me. Her younger sister, my age, joined the same society, and we ended up hitting it off later my junior year. By then the older sister had graduated, gotten married, and I really thought I’d never see her again.

When my senior year arrived, I remember watching a usual mob of students walking by to class and saw this guy that looked so much like my friend (the one from society I hit it off with junior year), I knew they had to be siblings. And I didn’t even know she had a college-aged brother. Come to find out, it was in fact her younger brother, but that was really all I ever saw of him that whole semester.

Second semester my senior year, my friend and I would have dinner together once or twice a week, and she soon started bringing her brother, Daniel, along. I still remember that the first two times he ate with us, I was in a really bad mood (he remembers that too) and couldn’t possibly have made a great impression on him. But after a couple weeks of him joining us, I started asking my friend every time I’d meet her for dinner if he was coming too, and if he didn’t, I’d look around for him in the (huge) cafeteria, and sometimes he’d try to find us too (as his sister half-jokingly, half-seriously claimed because I was there) and join us for his third course. :D It always made my day if he ate with us, and it made me so happy when I happened to run into him during the day that I still remember those occasions. I even told one of my friends, “He just makes me so happy!” And her response was that I needed a picture of him to keep around for when I need a smile.

By mid-semester we were clearly flirting and seeking each other out at events, just not clearly to us. All of this time, I honestly never even let myself start to really like him because I knew he couldn’t be interested in someone older than him. His big sister’s friend? I just knew he couldn’t be. Why would he? I really had no idea I was capable of stifling such a thing so easily, but I sure did!

Regardless of where my head supposedly was, I waited and waited for him to ask me to one of the closing events of the school year, a ginormous formal concert. When he hadn’t asked me to one of the earlier ones I was pretty crushed (yet without being interested in him? I know, I don't get it either), but when he finally asked me to the final one, I could not concentrate on my homework that evening for anything. I was straight up giddy. To top it all off, he also asked me to the big closing event the next night.

Us before the second concert--so sad about the horrible quality...

So the first concert? We hit it off like crazy. And the second night was just as amazing. Crazy, weird amazing. Like, we both went back to our dorms kind of blown away by what was happening. Me thinking all the while he couldn’t possibly want to be with me and … him thinking the same about me, I later found out.

Those concerts where we really hit it off were the couple of nights before graduation. After the graduation ceremony he and his sister were among the many people who found me to congratulate me, etc., but he stayed around the entire time while all my well-wishers came and went.

Just look at that guy! Sigh... <3

Afterward, my family and a friend and I were all going to go out to eat, so I invited Daniel and his sister to go with us, and their oldest sister from my freshman year and her husband ended up joining us too since they lived in the area. Yeah, there were a lot of people there at Ruby Tuesday’s, but I’m told I pretty much ignored everybody but him. Whoops! I really didn’t mean to, but gosh, he was sooo cute in his orange t-shirt (my well-known favorite color at the time) and orange sunglasses. Oh man, I can still feel what that meal was like… Anyway. :)

So after the most amazing meal of all time, we had to say goodbye. This guy, who I really knew nothing about but yet could not stop hugging when it was time to go. It was just the weirdest thing ever! He then headed home with his sisters and brother-in-law, then home to Pennsylvania for the summer, while I headed back home to West Virginia—six hours away from him. And just like that, just as soon as whatever it was that was happening started, it had to end.

Why on earth I finally found this guy the weekend of graduation—after four years of no guy—I have no idea. I guess God knew I definitely could not have handled a relationship with my perfectionist, over-achiever schoolwork and saved him for the minute my diploma was handed over. ;)

And his blue eyes... Yeah, I did a LOT of looking at these pictures that summer. ;)

Now if I had to wait to see him again, you’ll have to wait until Wednesday to see how this story ends. Okay, you know how it ends, since it’s our anniversary on Sunday, but you don’t know how we got there. ;)

P.S. Linking up with Funday Monday and Manic Monday. here and here. and Throwback Thursday