The Story of Us

So I have been blogging about our wedding for the better part of 5 months now. We are only 10 or 11 days away from the big "I Do's" and it occurred to me that I should write about the man that I am throwing in the towel for. Maybe that isn't the correct phrase, but you know what I mean!

I can't tell you about our first date or our first kiss. To be honest, I can't remember either of those moments. What I can tell you about though is the very first second that I saw him. It was freshmen orientation in late-June of 1999. At the University of Michigan they have 3 day, 2 night orientation in which you stay in a dorm and spend a lot of time with people you just met. I had been there for maybe 5 minutes when I approached a guy standing on his own. We became instant friends and from that moment we started hanging out for the weekend. His name was Jay M. and had I never said hello to him, my life would have turned out differently.

Fast forward to Day 2 of orientation. I am sitting on the steps of Angell Hall with Jay and my college friend Laura and, "Oh my god! Who is that guy?" runs through my head. Then to my amazement that guy starts walking towards us and he says hi to Jay. As it turns out, Jay and "that guy" had an orientation class earlier and "that guy" was none other than David R. From that moment I was smitten. He was tall, had curly hair and beautiful olive colored skin. We became friends, exchanged e-mail addresses and I spent the rest of the summer in front of the computer e-mailing back and forth with him.

Then comes Freshman year move-in and Dave only lives 2 dorms away. Woohoo! We became good friends with a few people who lived on his floor and we all hung out a lot. Did we start dating then? Of course not. That would have been too easy and why make life easy when you can complicate it to the max? It wasn't all bad though because Dave and I became the best of friends and I trusted him implicitly. We didn't start dating until the beginning of our Senior year of college. Dave lived around the corner in a house full of our friends and we spent all our time together except when I had a paper due or Dave had a program due, then we could be found in the Fishbowl or North Campus, respectively!!

After college, Dave moved back to NJ and I stayed in Michigan. We continued dating for a few months, but the distance finally got to me. We remained good friends and 2 years later, Dave had the good sense to move back to Michigan for Grad School. He wanted to get back together but I made him sweat it out for the better part of a year. I knew that if we got back together we would most likely get married and it took me awhile to figure out if that is what I wanted. I was only 24 years old at the time and in my family, 24 is very young to get married. However, Dave is just so darn lovable and wonderful that I would've been a fool to keep him waiting any longer.

On April 2nd, 2007 Dave proposed. We went out for a lovely dinner at the Gandy Dancer in Ann Arbor and then got coffee at our favorite spot downtown. I just wanted to sit but Dave insisted that we go for a walk. Dave doesn't insist often so I obliged. About 2 minutes later I knew what was coming because he was walking us towards the same spot we had met 8 years earlier. Granted, I did send him a link to ring that I wanted so I wasn't clueless, but it was all very sweet nonetheless. I said yes, obviously!!

Now we live in Colorado, own a home, have two wonderfully obnoxious dogs and 2 more cloyingly lovable cats. Oh and we are going to be husband and wife in the blink of an eye.

Sweet!