Alright, so David and I sat down and cranked out about one hundred wedding invitations yesterday. I have a blister forming on my thumb from all the envelopes I addressed, and I’m pretty sure David still has traces of Elmer’s glue on his hands. We piled all the completed invitations in a shoebox, which David took to the post office today and shipped off.
Hallelujah! They’re gone!
But… we put this website address on the back of each of them. So… that means I actually need to crack down and get some information up now.
So, to start things off, I thought I’d give some background on David and I for the friends and family out there that don’t know much about us as a couple other than we hooked up, got engaged, and we’re tying the knot at the end of next month.
The name of this blog was chosen because it’s true: we did, in fact, meet in France. It was way back in November of 2005 (The 10th, to be exact, though I’m nice and don’t expect David to remember the exact date). David and I were on a bus that was taking us to a youth retreat held in France. I had just moved to Germany a few months prior and was enjoying the busride because it gave me a chance to spend more time with my new youth group. David was not a part of my church youth group, which… I was unaware of. He just showed up and was talking to a cluster of eight grade boys like he was one of their friends.
I assumed immediately that David as an eight grader that one of the guys in my youth group had invited along. And yes, David still teases me about this from time to time.
We didn’t talk until we were on the bus, and when we did we hit it off from the start. After the retreat we swapped e-mail addresses and kept chatting over IM and eventually talked on the phone. He asked me out three separate times, and I finally said yes on January 16th. His persistence is always going to be appreciated on my part!
Both of us were seniors and we got to see each other a couple Saturdays a month. After graduation we saw each other more in the summer, and our relationship was going quite well. Of course… we both had plans to attend college, plans that had been in place before either of us knew the other existed. David (with quite the nudge from God, but that’s another story) ended up switching colleges late in July, but we were still set to attend different schools. We had a choice to make: either break up, or try to make a long distance relationship work.
It was a hard decision. When I moved to Germany I had tried the whole long distance thing, and it hadn’t worked out at all. But… David and I had had such a great summer, and after a lot of prayer and consideration, we talked it through and decided we’d go for it. So in August he set off to Missouri and I got on a plane for Idaho.
The long distance was hard, and that fall held a lot of rough waters for our relationship. But, each time we made it through, talked it out, and ended up growing. By November we were talking about seeing each other again in Germany for Christmas break. Little did I know that David was also making plans to see my dad over the break.
On December 23rd, 2006, David called me up and asked me if I could spend the afternoon with him. He had been sick as a dog for over a week, and was actually calling me on his way home from another hospital visit. I prepared myself to spend the afternoon watching movies and having David drool on my shoulder as he slept through it all. However, when I arrived he was looking better than he had in several days. (I found out later that he had been pretty drugged up in order to achieve this energetic state.) Before I even got in the door he asked if I wanted to drive up to the castle near his house. From time to time we would drive up there and walk around. It meant a lot to both of us, particularly because it was the site of our first date and our first kiss.
David proposed at the castle, and this time I didn’t make him ask me three times. It was a wonderful day and since then we’ve been slowly working on plans for our wedding, but more importantly for our marriage. We went back to our separate schools after the break, and the long distance wasn’t as hard as it had been in the fall. After a lot of prayer I transfered from my school in Idaho to HLG in Missouri, where David and I both attended last year. We plan to continue college together until we graduate, and we’ll see where God leads us after that.
