The minute I saw Alex I knew. In my group of friends he was referred to only as "That cute guy on the soccer team" It would be years before I even said two words to him, but for the moment, I was a 15 year old girl just hoping to have a Taylor Swift love story in the halls of DHS. Fast forward to grade 12 English class. We were thrust into a group project together with people who never came to class. So, me being me, I did all the work, but I needed Alex’s notes, so I BBMed him (ah the good old days), and we started talking pretty much every day after. We were best friends. You know those people who just instantly click? I felt so comfortable with him, and it was an amazing friendship, but did I still think he was cute? Definitely. Alex was moving away at the end of the summer, and I sent him a text wishing him luck at school, because he was quickly becoming one of my best friends. Little did I know it would become so much more than that. A few (long) months later, he finally asked me to be his girlfriend, at which point I'm pretty sure I said "Well duh." And the rest was history. I’ve literally never loved anyone more than I love him. If you know Alex, you know that he is the most sweet, genuine person both inside and out. And every so often, you'll find me still freaking out over the fact that this is my life, and I get to spend it with "that cute guy on the soccer team" who happens to also be my best friend, my fiance, and soon, my husband. You’re welcome, 15 year old me.

My first impression of Amanda was this grade 11 girl in a high school journalism class who was over the top obsessed with Taylor Swift. It was the first time we had had a class together, and up until this point other than her name I didn’t know anything about her. Now her memory of this class might be slightly different, as all she may remember of it is me continuously singing to “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins, and very enthusiastically acting out the drum solo – and if you’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing me sing, then you know how much she must have enjoyed it during work periods all the time! Move along to grade 12 English class now, I still didn’t know much about Amanda except that she seemed to enjoy English and was eager to do the work regarding the books we read and movies we watched. At some point throughout the semester, we got placed in a group together, which at first, I thought was going to suck as I just got grouped with this girl who put full effort into English assignments. Little did I know that this assigned group assignment would be one of the best things to ever happen to me. After this assignment is when I really started to get to know Amanda – we texted often, talked about our other classes, music, movies, and best of all, sports. Skip ahead to the summer after high school graduation, and I had decided to move away and go to Brock University. At this point we had become best friends, and I was starting to see that I could be happy with her. Throughout my first semester at university I found myself coming home more often than I ever expected to. Our friendship continued to grow until finally I worked up the courage to ask her to be my girlfriend. It’s now been an amazing and quick 7 years, I can say that I haven’t had a day where I didn’t tell myself how lucky I am that I’m getting to marry not just an amazing, beautiful, smart, and strong woman, but I’m also getting to marry my best friend!