Weddingbee Blog

Ah, the ol’ “how we met” story. I get asked this story a lot, along with the proposal story. Frankly, I’m sick of telling both of them. Every time I tell either of the epic sagas, my narration gets shorter and shorter. I kid you not, my answer to “How did he propose?!” has now become “He took me to watch the sunrise by the lake and then asked me to marry him.” The poor guy planned an elaborate proposal complete with soundtrack and mini muffins, and I reduce the event to a single sentence?? How rude!

Image via imeasy2love.blogspot.com

Now if someone asks how he proposed I can just say “Clearly you don’t read my posts on Weddingbee—check it out.” So now I’m writing a “how we met” post so I can nip that question in the bud as well. Because I would so much rather communicate through blogging than have actual human interaction, apparently. So here goes.

The first time I laid eyes on Mr. Unicycle was June 23, 2006. It’s strange that I remember the date, but it’s because it was the date of my university’s pre-orientation, and also because our wedding is on June 23, 2012. I love it.

Image via Marquette University

The orientation involved a lot of this.

We were in the same informational group with our parents, and the group leader made us go around the room and say something interesting about ourselves. Am I the only one who has a negative Pavlovian reaction to the phrase “go around the room”? It makes me nervous just typing it. And am I also the only one who never has anything interesting to say about themselves? Why do people make us do this??

Mr. Unicycle’s interesting fact was that he’s an Eagle Scout (hot). When it was my turn I copied him and said I’m a Gold Award recipient. For those of you who don’t know, the Gold Award is allegedly the Girl Scout equivalent of becoming an Eagle Scout. Except I’ve heard it’s way easier and less prestigious. Anyway, I sounded like a total tool telling a room full of people that I’m a “Gold Award Recipient.” Doesn’t that just sound like a tool-y thing to say? To top it off, I’m pretty sure I winked, nodded, and/or thumbsed-up in Mr. Unicycle’s direction (à la Fonzi) after I said it.

Image via Game Set Mattsch

“Eyyyyyyyyyy!”

The two of us didn’t actually meet that day. We met exactly two months later, on the first day of real orientation. We were once again in the same discussion group, where we bonded because we were both physics majors and we both lived in the same dorm. But at this point, we weren’t hardcore crushin’ on each other yet. I thought of him as the nerdy Eagle Scout who liked sci-fi, and I’m guessing he thought of me as the girl who looked like she belonged in seventh grade, even besides the fact that she wore pigtail braids to college orientation (yeah, I did that).

After orientation finished up it was time for college to start! I walked into my physics class on the first day of school (I was even wearing a special first-day-of-school outfit [no, it didn’t involve pigtail braids (but the second day of school did)]) and, lo and behold, Mr. Unicycle was in my class! The class had about thirteen people in it, four of whom were girls. My first thought was “these odds are great.” To say I have always had a thing for nerdy guys would be an understatement. Being in a room full of physics majors was actually a dream come true for me, believe it or not.

Image via 21stcenturyromanticism.blogspot.com

Hotties…

Mr. Unicycle and I waved at each other that first day but didn’t sit together, and we continued to say hello when we ran into each other around campus and in our dorm building. One day in physics class I suggested he study with me sometime, since we both lived in the same building and all. (When I was a freshman I would basically shun people who didn’t live in my building because I was so paranoid about being mugged on my way home at night. It was Milwaukee, after all.) So you could say I made the first move (unless you count my Fonzi wink, which you should).

But to be honest I didn’t have a crush on him until a few months later. During those months, we studied together all the time. My roommate and future MOH used to tease me and say “I think that Mr. Unicycle guy likes you,” which I denied. We also ate meals together and walked home from class together. I vaguely remember feeling awkward on our long walks home—the physics building was just about as far away from our dorm as possible, and I was kind of uncomfortable talking to a boy to begin with. Plus, I was starting to like him like that. I wish I could remember what it was like to be uncomfortable around Mr. Unicycle. I wish I had known that I was walking home with the guy who would one day be my husband. But that probably would have made me feel even more awkward.

Image via Art.com

This is an actual photo of us from back in the day.

When Christmas break rolled around, a bunch of us (including Mr. Unicycle) got together to go downtown and do all kinds of cliché touristy stuff like taking pics of ourselves in the Bean, walking around Marshall Field’s, which is to say Macy’s, and ice skating in Millennium Park (I totally milked my clumsiness for all it was worth by grabbing Mr. Unicycle’s hand the whole time).

Personal pic

And here we are that very day.

On our way home on the L, Mr. Unicycle asked if I wanted to hang out a few days later because he’d be in my neck of the woods. I said yes, then freaked out about whether or not it was a date throughout the whole train ride. We didn’t talk again until we got to our stop.

Later on I’ll tell you all about our 0th and 1st dates!