Whenever people ask us how we met or what's our story, it's usually met with an "oof, how much time do you have?" Our story began in December of 2017. Lauren and Tyler's dad, Hamish, work together at 4Kids. Hamish had asked Tyler to come volunteer at a Christmas toy store for foster children. Lauren was there working the event as well. Neither of us can remember the other one from that day or if we even said a word to each other. Over the next few months, Hamish became convinced that the two of us needed to meet, for real. Flash forward to August of 2018, Hamish called in the help of a few co-workers that knew Lauren well.. Knowing that Lauren would be working a back to school event for her families, Hamish asked Tyler to volunteer at the event. Now here's where it gets good. Tyler was told that there was a girl named Lauren who would be at the event and that she remembered him from the Christmas event and liked him. Lauren's friends/co-workers also told her that Tyler was coming to the back to school event and that he liked her from the Christmas event of 2017. The day of the event, Lauren hid from Tyler the entire day because she couldn't handle the awkwardness of the set up. Half way through the day, we talked for five minutes with all of Lauren's co-workers watching how the conversation was going. The event ended and we went our separate ways. A few days later, Hamish had separate conversations with us both to convince us to go to a chili cook off happening at 4Kids. Although neither of us wanted to go, neither of us knew how to tell him no. That next week we both went to chili cookoff. Hamish had told Lauren that Tyler wanted to ask her for her number that night. We aren't exaggerating by saying the event was weird and we made some small talk about chilli. At the end of the night, Tyler walked up to Lauren and said "It was good to see you again, see you at the next one." Lauren was incredibly confused but decided to laugh it off and move on from it all.

Nothing happened after that chili cookoff and the two of us really had decided it was a dead end. Until one of Lauren's good friend began working at 4Kids in the same department as Hamish. Which he used as one last hail mary attempt to set us up. After talking to Lauren's friend, Hamish got Lauren's Instagram handle and texted it to Tyler. As you can imagine, Tyler was confused and not really sure what to make of the whole situation since we hadn't spoken in months. He went home that night and talked with his sisters about what he was even supposed to do with Lauren's Instagram handle. Tyler's sisters encouraged him to reach out to Lauren if he thought it was worth taking a shot on. So that night at 9:09 PM on November 12th 2018 (Lauren screenshot it - that's how we know!) Tyler slid into Lauren's DMs on Instagram. We talked about Disney and running a lot in those first few conversations because it's pretty much the only thing Lauren posts about. After a few weeks of talking, we set up our first date for Black Friday. On November 23rd 2018, we went on our first date. Now we don't claim this as our official anniversary and you'll soon understand why. We met at the movies and planned to grab coffee afterwards. Everything was going well and we were enjoying our movie until about 3/4 of the way in. Out of nowhere, the back door of the theater swung open and someone came in yelling "Is there a Lauren Burr in here?" Nervously, Lauren got up to be greeted by several police officers. They let her know that someone had hit her car in the parking lot and they needed her to come move it because it was blocking a lane of traffic. They also let her know that her dad had been trying to reach her and he was also outside by her car. Lauren ran back inside to let Tyler know everything going on and the two went outside to find her dad and her car wedged between two other vehicles. We wish we could say this all wasn't true, but it was.

After that disastrous first date story, we had a redo on what we claim to be our real anniversary. On December 9th 2018, Tyler planned out a date that included hot chocolate, Christmas lights, and dinner overlooking the beach. The date went well and Lauren figured that surely at the end of the night Tyler would make plans to see her again. Unbeknownst to Lauren, Tyler already had the next date planned out in his head. However, Lauren said something that evening that alluded to she would not enjoy what he had planned. So being back at square zero, Tyler ended that night by saying "thanks for agreeing to this." At the time, Lauren was very confused what that meant, but luckily we can laugh about it now and found that it works in our favor for a wedding hashtag. A few days later we did make plans to see each other again and over the next few weeks got to know each other a bit better. It wasn't until Lauren left for a week at Christmas to go on a cruise with her family, that we realized we might like each other and that we missed each other a little more than we would have imagined. Since then, life has been filled with Disney World trips, a half marathon together, late night FaceTime calls while Tyler finished grad school, Chick-Fil-A, laughs, and a lot of I love yous. If you made it through all of our story, congrats! We can't wait to celebrate with you on our wedding day!