We're Tying the Knot! We can't wait to celebrate with you!We're Tying the Knot! We can't wait to celebrate with you!

Coincidentally, we had just missed each other for a long time. Bry initially attended Columbus Elementary (now Willamette) and transferred to Newby in 3rd grade. The year prior, I found myself no longer welcome at the private school I had been attending, so I transferred to Columbus for my 3rd-grade year. We ended up at the same middle and high schools but in very different groups. Many know me as a very academically motivated person, while Bry is known for despising the very grounds where organized classes take place. To our knowledge, we never had a single class together due to our differing interests and the luck of the draw when it came to shared classes. We knew of each other, but that was about the extent of it—until our senior year. In December 2019, I was coping with a lot of difficult emotions after a couple of significant events. I turned to distraction as a way to get through it. I poured my time into extracurriculars and classes while also trying to foster as many real friendships as I could. In my search for new people to get to know, I responded to Bry's YOLO post on Snapchat. For those who don't know—or have chosen to forget—YOLOs were a way to send anonymous messages that the recipient could choose to respond to publicly. As you might imagine, these were used in a variety of ways. I simply used it to ask, "Are you open to new friends?" To which she responded on her story with, "Sure." From there, I began messaging her. Initially, our very slow conversation (perhaps one message a day from either of us) was just an attempt to make a new friend. As I got to know her, I found myself texting others less, if at all, and messaging her more consistently. Snapping allows you to send a random photo with text on it. She would respond to my messages with pictures of scenes from whatever she was watching at the time. I made it my mission to guess what she was watching by any means necessary. Many of the scenes I regrettably recognized from memory (because I'm simply that cool), and for the rest, I used any tool at my disposal to figure them out. I guess this impressed her enough to keep talking to me. This went on for several months. We saw each other once or twice in passing at school but had no other contact yet. It wasn't until Covid hit that we had an opportunity to connect. As many remember, Covid turned simple goods into gold. Toilet paper was one of these commodities. One day, while chatting, I learned that Bry and her mom were searching for that impossible-to-find item. At the time, I was the lord of Albertsons, where a fresh shipment of toilet paper waited in the back room. As any good lord would, I offered her some of my kingdom's bounty. They accepted my offer and set out to the grocery kingdom I presided over. It was during this exchange that I realized she was something special. To my knowledge, this was our first in-person interaction. I was incredibly nervous. At least I was getting the "meet the parents" moment out of the way early, right? The exchange took place in the bakery, where I would later hire her to work temporarily, and we hit it off. Though brief, there was clear chemistry in our interaction, and I managed to make her smile. From that smile, you could say I was smitten. Her mom thought I was cool, which was a bonus. That moment was the first real interaction that kickstarted our relationship. I should mention that this whole story was a sham because I later realized that the delinquent I'd raced in swim lessons after winning a Pokémon card tournament at Hopscotch was actually her brother, William. Both of them had taken swim lessons with me at the McMinnville pool. This happened coincidentally in 3rd grade—the very year we would have met had she not transferred schools. So there you have it. We actually met at swim lessons but didn’t realize it until 10 or 11 years later. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.