Saturday, July 7, 2007

Once Upon a Time

Sam and I met in high school, and were dating by our senior year. As proof, here is our senior prom picture: 


Haha, yeah..... awkward, but fun. I'm glad for high school for many reasons, not the least of which is because I met my husband. However, in reality, I have no idea how I even ended up with a boyfriend, much less a spouse (who was, unsurprisingly, my only boyfriend). Like it was for a lot of other people, high school was a very strange in-between time for me, and I'm glad I don't have to relive that phase of my life. And I definitely made that dress.



*Ahem* Moving on.

We dated through college, which for us was 700 miles and 4 states apart. It was a good time of growth and excitement, both for us individually and as a couple. It's amazing what nightly phone calls and no physical contact does for your communication skills! I studied nursing, Sam studied math education. We talked about everything, but mostly about the future. We wanted to get married right after college. We wanted to wait a year or so before having kids, but not wait too long! We wanted "several" children, the exact number indeterminate, but somewhere greater than 3. We wanted to take these theoretical children and move them to a foreign country as missionaries. We had great plans.

So, like a good girl, I waited for Sam to propose. And I waited. And I waited. Then I graduated, and I got a job, this time only 2 hours away from my hometown, where Sam was living and looking for a job. And then I started crying and asking questions.... turns out my dad had told Sam we couldn't get married until at least a year after college, when he was "settled," had a house, and roughly 40K in the bank as savings. He also told Sam not to tell me that they had talked.

Whose dad DOES that? (*Hint: Mine)

Apparently he never got the message that the whole dragon-guarding-the-maiden-in-the-tower-dad thing is supposed to be something of a myth. But that's ok, because I talked some sense into him, and made him grudgingly admit that since we could, in fact, get married if we darn well wanted to, it being the 21st century and all, that he would go ahead and give us permission. And for the record, both my dad and Sam were great about it from that point on.

And then Sam proposed!



This is my favorite engagement photo. It's also the only one I have where you can kind of see my ring. Amazingly enough, we managed to pay for our wedding and Italian honeymoon by ourselves, debt-free, without either of us owning a house or having 40K in the bank. That being said, we did have a pretty good savings account since we had both been blessed to get through 4 years of school debt-free, mostly via scholarships, and had each been working in our fields for a year by the time we got married. That was even after Sam bought me a very nice engagement ring.

I hope my dad is proud (and I know he is).



So, on July 7, 2007, on a Saturday clearly chosen for its numerical qualities by the Math Major in the relationship, we became Mr. & Mrs. Myth. It was, of course, a fairy-tale wedding, performed in our hometown, in the same stone church where Sam grew up, and where my parents were married. I remember being deliriously happy. Sam, of course, says the same thing, and I believe him, because I saw it all over his face.

I could share lots of pictures to demonstrate how happy we looked, but it would take a lot of space. Thankfully, my sister has already put together a slideshow of our wedding, which I will share instead. She did a very nice job, I think, plus the song's lyrics match the theme of this blog quite nicely.


The pictures did get grainy on the upload to YouTube though, so I will end with a nice still shot:


And we fully intended to live happily ever after, doing all the things we'd ever dreamed of!