Being the "writer," I find it too irresistible to leave this section blank despite how self indulgent it feels. I guess you could say it started with a simple "James Shirley, I've heard a lot of rumors about you." And then it was this unbearable fall out and tossing rocks at windows and that terrible feeling of having lost a limb. Always looking down to find it still missing and remembering how it once felt to have it. It only took about a decade and a "Happy Birthday" text to change my mind. The thing about having lived without someone for so long is that you know you can survive without them. The thing about finding them again is that now you know you don't want to in a far more certain, bold and compelling way. I like to write stories. I've written pages and pages of them. Created friends to pass my time with, and of course, made them fall in and out of love a dozen times. I've had the pleasure of creating characters and experienced the torture of killing them off. I've built worlds and families and friend groups and homes and the bars where everyone knows everyone's name. I've carefully constructed moments that define people, given them names and nicknames, given them best friends and lovers and enemies. I've exposed their hearts more vividly than open heart surgery. I've "sat down at a typewriter and opened a vein" as Hemingway would put it. I could have never written us. Love is funny and fast and easy and hard and sometimes even cruel. It's a lot like water - it nourishes us and yet can kill us just as quick. That sounds like a morbid thing to say on a website for a wedding, but it's true. It mends us, defends us, keeps us and sadly leaves us sometimes too whether we are ready or not. I choose to honor those I've lost by loving even harder and more fiercely. It's the only thing that makes sense to me. We fell in love again in the Bottleworks parking lot. It was instant, surreal, humorous, maybe a little messy and somehow still perfect. I couldn't have written it. I get to marry my best friend. My confidant. My constant cheerleader. My fierce protector and humble partner. And luckily enough, even my dogs like him. Come to the wedding. It'll be fun. With love, The Bride