Weddingbee Blog

If you’re anything like me (aka just a trifle nosey!) you are a sucker for ‘How We Met’ stories. Life brings people together in all sorts of ways and I can happily admit that I’m addicted to hearing about them. I like to think that our own little history is pretty special!

Do you want the shortened version? It goes a little something like this:

Girl hears song on radio, girl falls in love with song, girl stalks band online ands finds their forum, girl makes friends online including a sweet Australian boy, girl develops gigantic crush, boy and girl eventually swap mobile numbers, girl text messages boy during a particularly boring uni lecture, boy calls girl that night, girl meets boy at movie theatre, girl thinks boy is adorable, boy thinks girl is okay too…and the rest is history.

{Image from here}

Ah the cuteness. Who knew that simply hearing a song on the radio would change my life? Dramatic, but true. Personally though, I prefer the one with the more juicy details:

I was seventeen and had just finished my last year of high school. At the time I was working in a scrapbooking store while waiting for my university degree to start, and I was listening to the radio. A lot. And that was when I heard it: this song, by Lifehouse. It was their breakout single and was all over the radio in Australia back then, and I absolutely fell in love. I may or may not have also fallen in love with the lead singer, Jason Wade, because he was a good looking man with a heck of a voice. Anyway, we’ve always been a tech-savvy family, so I jumped straight online, googled the band, fell in love with their music and their lyrics, and joined their online forums.

I met a small group of like-minded music-loving Australians on that forum, and Mr. Jaguar was one of them. We chatted for months, and eventually moved on to personal emails and text messages and I found out he lived only half an hour away from me. I developed a major, major crush on him, but I’d never even seen his face, and since I assumed nothing would ever come of it, I never bothered to ask. This dragged on into 2002, when I was tempted to invite him to my eighteenth birthday, but I chickened out—who invites someone they met on the internet to a party? Things stayed the same until my impatience got the better of me and I couldn’t take it any longer.

I was sitting in a philosophy lecture and bored out of my mind when I decided to bite the bullet and ask him out. ’Do you have any plans tonight? Want to see a movie?’ I remember freaking out and telling a friend what I’d just done, and we waited together to see what the text message reply would be. ‘I’ll call you tonight.’ He did call, I heard his voice for the first time, swooned a little and we arranged to meet up at a local movie theatre.

I got ready and did what any normal person would do: I dragged my mum along with me to make sure he wasn’t an axe murderer. I still remember catching sight of him; the nerves were overwhelming, but there he was, with his cute face and nice shoes, and I knew it was all going to be fine. I quickly shooed my mum away, although we did have a code word just in case of emergency. (I can’t remember what it was now, probably something random like ‘spoon’ or ‘fork’ - we’re very creative like that.)

And like I said before, the rest was history. We were smitten.

One of our very first dates.. Spring in the Sydney Botanic Gardens.

Looking back now, it seems crazy. Meeting on the internet is such a common thing these days, but back then, it was more than a little awkward to try and explain. We used to just tell people we’d met at a university party, rather than sharing the whole story and watching their expressions change—but eventually dropped the charade and told everyone the real deal. Although, I still don’t think the Jaguar in-laws know the full story to this day…maybe that’d be a nice little memento to throw into our wedding day speeches!

So now it’s your turn to spill the beans: how did you meet your significant other?