How My Wife and I Got Together

The first time I saw my wife, I was looking out my dorm room window in college and she was walking along the sidewalk across the street. I thought to myself, "I'd like to marry a girl like that." I had no idea who she was or what she was like, but I think all people can evoke feelings from fifty feet away. I didn't realize at the time that we shared a "Survey of Jazz" class that semester. We ended up sitting next to each other and I learned she was a Canadian ballet major. We were just friends throughout that school year until one night when we went to dinner after midnight with her roommate. She said she had a final exam early the next morning and it would be better if she didn't sleep at all rather than get only a few hours, so I agreed to stay up with her. What followed may not sound very exciting, but we hung out at the laundry, I played her every song on every Depeche Mode CD because she'd never heard them before, she showed me Singin' in the Rain because I'd never seen it before, and I fell in love with her. Our first kiss was at the laundry, but not on that night. I saw most of my friends get married or start serious relationships that year, but I never saw myself getting married while in school. Still, I met her parents and she met my mom and a couple of my aunts. The following year we visited each other's hometowns, met siblings and grandparents. We spoke everyday except for a month in the summer when she went to England. This next part may be very unromantic, but facts are facts: she was a year ahead of me in school and I knew that her student visa would run out after she graduated. That meant either a long distance relationship or something more and I knew what I had to do. I proposed two years to the day after our first date. We were married the day after she graduated, May 3, 2003. Click on this link to see where we spent the weekend after our wedding.