We "met" in middle school through mutual friends. I say "met" because we texted back & forth frequently, but I don't think we ever met in person until high school. Freshman year of HS, we were texting, me in KC for volleyball, Thomas in Napa on vacation, when he got into the hot tub with his phone. Since he was in the middle of nowhere, he couldn't replace the phone till a few days later. He sent me a few messages when he got a new one, and.... well, I never responded.... I still have the messages to prove it. I know, I'm the worst. & that was the end of our texting relationship. Until senior year at Belleville East prom. Mind you, I almost didn't go, bc I didn't have a date & had graduated early, so I felt out of the loop. Megan & Jared, who were going as friends, insisted I go with them, so I did. Thomas went with another girl from East who was in the same group as us. We didn't talk at dinner or pictures, but at some point, Thomas asked me to dance, to the song 'Don't Stop Believin' Which starts off slow, & then gets fast, & back & forth, so super hard to dance to. But we laughed & made it work. We hung out at after prom, and then parted ways. I was having a few friends over to my house & shortly after leaving, I got a text, from a boy who luckily already had my number. He asked if he could come join us, totally understood if not, was super polite, ya know how he is. I panicked because I really wanted to say yes, but my mom had told me no one else was allowed to come over before she went to bed. So I took a risk, and said yes anyways. I remember my mom asking me who that boy was the next morning and I thought I was grounded, but she just said okay! We hung out for about a month before he asked me to be his girlfriend the day we both left for college orientation, 8 hours a part. We didn't know how we would make it work, we just knew that we wanted to try. 6 years later & here we are!

We met in middle school through mutual friends. In classic Belleville, IL middle school fashion, we would end up in the same places but be too nervous to have much of a conversation. Anyways, cell phones were great for texting. The problem though with cell phones is that when you get into a hot tub with it in your pocket because you are finally having a great conversation with someone: the phone doesn’t do so well when it goes underwater. Fast forward a few years, I have a new phone and can’t get into a hot tub or pool without checking 5 times to be sure my phone isn’t in my pocket. We were lucky enough to reconnect senior year at prom - not cliché at all. We were standing around in our group of mutual friends, and I worked up the confidence to go up to her and ask her to dance, which was a risky decision considering some of you have seen my dance moves. I was very up front with her about my lack of dancing ability, and she responded by saying we would make it work. We then went 8 hours apart for college, did long distance for 4 years, and logged A LOT of miles on the road. Luckily we were surrounded by a lot of great friends and family who supported us and encouraged us. Here we are 6 years later, ready to get married. I don’t know if it was the dance moves that won her over, but I knew pretty early on once college started that she had won me over. As she said to me 6 hours ago.. we made it work, and now I get to marry my best friend. Thank you to everybody who has played such an important role for us and our relationship over the years!