(Disclaimer No. 2: Yes. I was 16 and Andrew was 22 when we met. Let's just get that out of the way right off the bat.)
Most people think Andrew and I met at EFY. Which, maybe is technically true. We certainly wouldn't be married if it weren't for EFY, but we were also never introduced and never even talked to each other at EFY. My friend Rachel and I attended EFY in Virginia in July 2009. Andrew was Rachel's counselor, and I was in a different group. Don't ask me why Rachel and I didn't room together. I have no idea why that thought didn't cross our minds. ANYWAY, I was vaguely aware Andrew existed because he was my friend's counselor and she talked about him and how awesome he was. Andrew knew I existed because I was the cute red-headed girl that hung around his group a lot.
(me and rachel at EFY)
(andrew at EFY... haha)
That was literally the extent of EFY.
SO on the way home from EFY Rachel kept going on and on about how cool Andrew was and how he was the best counselor, etc etc. At one point she said "Ya know, you guys are super similar. You should be friends."
Fast-forward a month-ish, and Facebook randomly suggested I added Andrew as a friend. So I clicked his name and Facebook stalked him a bit and discovered that he had, truly, the greatest About Me of all time. I know that sounds so stupid, but his About Me charmed the pants off me so I decided to add him. He added me back and we started talking. And we discovered that we're basically the same person. We talk the same, we have the same sense of humor, we like the same stuff, we're both musicians, etc. etc. I also found out that he lived near Greensboro, which is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Fayetteville, where I was living at the time.
After about a month of exclusively talking on Facebook, Andrew and I super wanted to hang out. There was a YSA dance on Halloween in my town that his stake was invited to so Andrew and his friend Drew made plans to come to that. I couldn't go to the dance because I was a) 16 and b) in a Music Man dress rehearsal that night, but they went to the dance and afterward we all went to Rachel's house to hang out. Halloween is Andrew's birthday. He turned 23 that night and we partied from 10 pm until 4 am. (And by party I mean, ate ice cream & pizza rolls, jammed on the guitar, and watched really old viral videos)
By the time they finally left that night (morning) it was sort of an unspoken thing between Andrew and I that we had a lot of potential. We exchanged numbers at some point during that weekend, and thus began the era of crazy insane epic texting. Fun fact: I have had some sort of contact with Andrew (texting, phone, skype, etc.) every single day since October 31, 2009. Woot. I also went home the next day and told my mom that I was going to marry him. She thought I was dumb, I'm sure, being 16 and whatever. But I just knew that at the very least, he was exactly the kind of person I wanted to marry.
Since we were long distance, and since I didn't have Skype capabilities, Andrew and I texted pretty much incessantly. We were both attending community college (I finished high school early) and I pretty much just texted him through all my classes. (Sorry, mom) If I was in a class where I couldn't text, I would write letters.
In November we finally had that "I like you like you" conversation and surprise! It was mutual. For Thanksgiving that year my family was visiting my uncle's family in Winston-Salem, which is basically the same area that Andrew lived. We hung out for about an hour the day after Thanksgiving and just drove around in his car, listened to music, and held hands for the first time.
The next time I saw him after that was January 16, 2010 when he kissed me for the first time in Rachel's bedroom. (Whoops sorry, Lach) He came down about once a month from that point on.
(aw yeah flip phone, that's the stuff)
At this point, my family obviously knew something was going on. He came down all the time, and if he wasn't here I was probably talking to him. For the most part my parents seemed cool with it, and pretty much just let me do my own thing. Which, in retrospect, is way cool of them. Andrew's family didn't know yet, because we weren't sure how they would react and we wanted to wait to see how our relationship continued.
In May Andrew went to California for the summer to sell pest control. He was gone from May-August and I was a total wimp about it. I think that summer was very telling for our relationship because I wasn't sure what it would be like with him being across the country. I couldn't talk to him as much, I definitely didn't see him, etc.
Once he got back from California it was pretty much game over. We knew we were getting married. It was just a matter of when. I was 17 and in my 2nd year of community college. He was finishing up his audio engineering degree. I applied to BYU and he decided he would too.
In December of that year (2010) I finally met all his family and we went "Facebook official" and long story short, it went really well and it wasn't weird and everything just kind of worked out perfectly. There isn't really much to say after that, except that everything was great and at one point Andrew came down every single week for 5 or 6 months. He would usually come down on Friday after class and stay the night in our guest room and leave late on Saturday.
In June 2011 I moved out to Utah. Andrew had to stay back in NC for a little longer to finish up his last semester of his Associates degree. He finally joined me in August and for the first time in our almost two years of dating we lived in the same city. I turned 18 in July and finally there was nothing to keep us from getting married. Originally I was really adamant about not getting married until I was 20, because I knew that's what my mom wanted and to be honest I was a little freaked out about getting married so young. But eventually I just knew knew knew that Andrew was who I was supposed to marry and so what was the point in waiting?
Andrew proposed October 25, 2011. (You can read that story here) We set a date for April and it was good, amen.
That year we attended BYU Salt Lake Center and took a few classes together, which was super fun. We also did all that normal wedding planning stuff, which actually proved to be a little difficult across the country. But it all worked out perfectly and ya know... here we are.
We got married April 28, 2012 in the Raleigh, North Carolina temple. We got married at 10 am (or something like that ha) and the room was overflowing with people. Definitely exceeded the limit, whoops. It was the happiest, most surreal day. Over and over again Andrew and I just kept saying "Wait, this is real? We're MARRIED?" We had talked about our wedding day since before it was even a remote possibility and then it was finally here?
And then it was over.
We went on a honeymoon (Everyone should honeymoon in Disney World. I'm serious), we registered for classes at UVU, we got a house (a real house!), we made Christmas albums, we bought a car, (and then another car ugh), we went on an epic road trip to Vidcon and met all my favorite friends, we got pregnant, and now we have a baby.
All of that has happened in four years and has made for the happiest four years of my life. And the really great thing is that I have a strong feeling that it's only going to get better.
No comments:
Post a Comment