Because I was friends with his sister Ashleigh, I had heard stories about Johnny for years. Always traveling, engaging in some scholarly pursuit, volunteering to enrich children's lives, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, blah blah blah. Oh, he did triathlons in 90 degree heat? While getting his PhD? Tone it down a notch, man. "Some of us have to work", I would say, from the couch at my mom's where I was living after college. I met him for the first time at Ashleigh's wedding. Johnny has this keen energy that makes you feel incredibly important when you're talking to him. Since I love feeling important, I kept talking to him. Turns out none of the volunteering was court-ordered, and he was genuinely a wonderful person. Was I developing a crush on Ashleigh's brother? Was this allowed? I didn't think so, but he was heading back to grad school in Miami and I had a lot of TV shows to catch up on at my mom's house so it seemed like a non-issue. The following week, I received both a text and a hand written note from Johnny. The crush resurfaced, despite my best efforts. An email correspondence began (such a Gen Xer), which eventually led to Johnny visiting me and us going on our first date. Over five years later, he still makes me feel incredibly important (unless the Patriots are playing).

I had known most of Ashleigh's friends growing up one way or another, yet Laurel and I always missed an encounter. When they hung out after college, Ashleigh described Laurel as her "funny little friend" who would come over to hang out and watch movies and eat pizza, and who always made her laugh. Needless to say, the visual in my head was not the one I was greeted with when I first laid eyes on Laurel at Ash & Jack's rehearsal dinner. After an (incredulous) introduction from Jack, I decided I needed to find out for myself. Was she really that funny? That little? That capable of eating so much pizza? I wish I could say I didn't follow her around that weekend like a lost puppy, but there are too many witnesses. As I would find out over the course of text messages, emails, Skype dates, hand-written letters, and trips up and down the east coast, the answer to all of those questions is an emphatic 'yes'! But there is also so much more. I would also discover how kind, caring, talented, thoughtful, and fun she is. And now, a little over six years since the day we met, she will become my funny little wife.