Weddingbee Blog

It’s been five years since the Baconator and I made our love connection. We always nonchalantly say “Oh, we met during study abroad,” but really there is a lot more to it that we tend to just glaze over. Like, we had both lived in the same dorm but never really hung out until one random night on the roof, or that we were really brought together by a mutual disdain for Valentine’s Day and love for tequila.

You see, I spent much of my first month in London holed up in my room talking to my friends back home online or out in the city with my best friend from high school (aka MOH Bacon), so making friends in my British dorm wasn’t really a priority. I did a little bit of loitering in the common room that was thinly veiled in smoke, since you could still smoke inside back then, and I once ended up on the roof of the dorm with a British dude, an American girl, and a bearded American guy. The view wasn’t what we hoped it would be and the roof was spongy, so that adventure was short lived since none of us had a death wish. But that was pretty much my extent of being social with the Furnival Hall folks.

I did make one friend through my study abroad program who happened to live next door to me:

a girl from Minnesota who was pretty shy, but really sweet, and wasn’t very confident around new people. So when a couple of guys were knocking on doors selling tickets to the Uni’s Valentine’s Day party at a club downtown, she deferred to me and said those ever so persuasive words, “I’ll go if you’ll go.” With those puppy dog eyes staring me down, I bought a ticket and began to figure out what I was going to wear to this shindig.

Once at the club in Piccadilly Circus, we all got drinks and commenced the casual flirtation that occurs when drinks and Valentine’s Day collide. As the tall, skinny, awkward, blond American decided he was gonna target me as the object of his affection (and flailing arm dance moves), in swoops this bearded guy I’d hung out with on the roof. Dressed in a blue button down, he slyly cut into our conversation and steered me away from the train wreck that would have been cutting the rug with the other fellow. As a thank you, I offered up tequila shots and when he accepted, I knew that I was on my way to making friend number 2.

Little did I know that from that evening on, the bearded guy would become a fixture in the rest of my British experience. We spent tons of time just hanging out in our tiny dorm rooms talking and getting to know each other: we’re both only children; we both were educated abroad (me in Thailand, him in Switzerland); we’re both from the Midwest; we’re both love trying new foods; we both were marketing majors; we both can’t imagine a life that doesn’t involve travel. Outside the dorm, we spent our time checking out art museums and seeing sights around London like the Tower and the Monument to the Great Fire. It wasn’t until the he met my best friend that I knew he had my heart, though, because if he could get along with my partner in crime, he could stick around.

And the Bacons were born!

*All Personal Photos*