The Story

As I get ramped up for a busy 15 months of wedding planning, I figured I’d fill some blog space with Bryan & I’s story.  (I love to tell this story, so you might want to get some popcorn while you read.) To me it’s a pretty fun story that I wish I would have known the ending to when I was 16 and desperately wanting out of my hometown. 

Bryan and I both grew up in the same small town. (When I say small, I mean around 3500… My high school class was a whopping 84 kids.)  Even though our town was teeny-tiny compared to most towns in America, Bryan and I did not meet each other until much, much later in life.  Bryan is 5 years older than me, so our paths never really crossed while we were younger.  They came pretty close to each other though.  Our moms both worked for the bank in town (at that time, there was only one), and my friend dated Bryan’s younger brother for a brief while.  That was as close as we came to meeting though. 

Ironically enough, I do remember him. He was the much older upper-classmen and I remember watching him walking down the halls of school one day, holding hands with his then-girlfriend.  I think that is my one memory of him in my younger days though.

Fast forward a few years, we both ended up at the same college. Even though he was older, he was on the “extended” plan (as we like to call it), so we were in the same proximity for about a year and a half.  We actually had some mutual friends, still did not run across each other though.  After Bryan graduated from college, he moved to Phoenix, AZ for about three years.  I graduated a few years after him and moved myself to Chicago, IL for about a year.  After realizing that we both loved the mid-west and hated being away from our families, we both ended up moving back to the area near our hometown within a year of each other.  Bryan ended up back in our hometown, me about 20 miles to the west.  Still no meeting though.

In late 2006, Bryan ended up working for a company we will call Acme.  About a year and a half later, I ended up at the same company.  When I started, I was dating someone else, but Bryan and I hit it off pretty fast as friends. By the end of the year, I had ditched the other guy and my supervisor started making comments about how Bryan walked past my desk a lot during the day. After that I really noticed how often he walked past my desk, with alternate, shorter routes available for him.

Right before Christmas, we went out with another co-worker of ours… Two martinis and a few shots later, I called him out on walking past my desk so often, and we kissed by the end of the night.  The rest is history!