The never-before-seen story of how Grady and Anna ended up together! It all started in the very first week of college. Somehow, we grew up twenty minutes apart and never knew each other in high school (thank goodness), so UGA was the first place we’d ever interacted. Mutual friends encouraged us to come to different “first-week” events where everyone is there to hopefully pick out their best friends for the rest of college. Anna and I both didn’t know it, but that night introduced us to so many great friends that would remain close all throughout college. And it brought us each other! Here would be the perfect place to write about how I couldn’t get Anna out of my mind after first meeting her, but unfortunately that’s not how the story goes (sorry Anna, but she’s known this for a while too). When I met Anna, I knew that she would be a friend I’d want to keep seeing, but I was off the market at the time so that possibility never crossed my mind. I was also so caught up in the whirlwind of meeting so many people at once that I barely had time to consider one person before being introduced to the next. Despite it being so hectic, Anna and I continued to see each other in big group hangouts and would gravitate towards one another no matter how large the group. As I continued to hang out with people in my freshman year, I noticed a common denominator in every combination of friends I could dream up: Anna was always there. And I don’t think that was an accident (even if I didn’t recognize it at the time). I loved being with Anna for her humor and her ability to make even the most mundane things fun. She could always make something interesting, whether it was reading in the library or digging out of dumpsters to pass out free food (iykyk). Halfway through freshman year, I was back on the market, but this didn’t change anything between us. We continued to hang out, sometimes alone but mostly in groups, and I believed neither of us had feelings for one another. I wouldn’t be writing this if I had been right. As we hung out more and more, I still was blind to see what was going on. I guess I thought walking her home or having picnics in the woods was something “friends” did, so I’ll take the blame on being blind to what was clearly happening. All that time, Anna liked me and was trying to figure out how I felt… but since I didn’t know how I felt, you can guess that she had a few months of torment trying to crack the code. Finally, after trying to decipher all my mixed signals, Anna gave up. She told a friend that if I didn’t address what was happening before Thanksgiving break, that would be her sign to stop liking me. God is great, because right before Thanksgiving, I had a nudge to start texting her a little bit more than usual. I’m not sure what led me there, but I guess I realized that I wanted our fun to last a lifetime. So, I finally woke up to what I was feeling and prayed that it wasn’t too late to win her over. It wasn’t. We chatted for a long time over December and Christmas break, even being countries apart as we talked more frequently and at all times of the day. I worked my way up to asking her out, and even though she was STILL unsure whether it was an official date or not, we met up and made it clear that this was something more than friends hanging out. And the rest is history! After our first date, we went on another, and another, and a few hundred more to make it to this moment. When our wedding rolls around, we’ll have been together for almost five years (over five if you count all the unofficial dates). Clearly, I needed a bunch of time to recognize my feelings in the beginning, but these (almost) five years have been nothing but assurance that this is where the Lord wants us. I’m most thankful for the nudge that opened my eyes all those years ago. If not for that, we wouldn’t have built this website, and you wouldn’t have ended up here.