6/14/2005 09:26:00 AM|||Garnet|||

Two years ago today I married the man of my dreams. We had a beautiful wedding with lots of family and friends. You can see the professional photos of it here.

When people ask us how we met, Honey and I always say, "we met on line in a chatroom...but we actually went to high school together." It's true. He was three years ahead of me in high school and he dated a girl in my class. That's the only way I knew him - or "of him," I guess you could say. He wasn't my type at the time and I don't think we ever spoke. I just remember seeing him around from time to time.

A few years after high school, I started hanging out in a Colorado-based IRC chat room. After a while, a couple regulars in the room started hosting wild parties for us all to get together and meet face-to-face. I was a serious party girl at these gatherings and was usually pretty inebriated by the end of the parties! At one party in particular, I saw this guy who looked familiar. The way Honey tells it is something like this:
"I saw you there in your velvet shirt and two long braids, dancing in the living room with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. You were dancing and singing and having a real good time. You started to come into the kitchen where I happened to be standing. You stopped dead in your tracks en route to the fridge, looked at me and said, 'HEY! Didn't I go to high school with you?!' I said 'yep' you said, 'RIGHT ON!' and then returned to your dancing and singing."

For the next couple of years, Honey and I would run into each other at various parties. We would sometimes end up going to buy cigarettes or more beer together. I remember always trying to impress him with my (albeit very limited) knowledge of techno music because I knew he was into that kind of thing. I always felt this magnetic pull towards him. It wasn't necessarily physical attraction...just something pulled me towards him. We'd talk a bit but he seemed very shy. I always thought he had a thick shell to crack. (He now says that he thought the same thing about me!) I always wanted to talk to him more, hang out. But at these parties, one or both of us was otherwise involved with a significant other. So we just blew it off.

Then, in November 1999, I was online one Friday evening, talking about a wine tasting party I had been invited to. I wanted to go but it turned out the party was going to be full of mostly couples and I needed a date. When I complained about that, Honey spoke up and said he'd be my date. He admitted that he was drunk at the time and I accused him of not knowing what the heck he was committing himself to and that he would not remember it in the morning. He assured me that he would remember. The next morning, I got online and he was there. He was hungover but he remembered: "Wine Tasting party...you and me...December 12. See, I remembered!" He said to me. I was floored.

We went out a couple times before the party just to make sure we'd have a good time together. Those dates were wonderful! I had never felt so completely comfortable with a man in my entire life. We never ran out of things to talk about.

By the time we went to the wine tasting party together, we were hooked on each other! We had only been on two previous dates and we had to bring an appetizer to the party. We brought dumplings that we needed to cook upon arrival. We were at the host's house, boiling and preparing our dumplings when another guest approached us and asked, "How long have you two been married?" We were shocked! We told him it was only our third date, that we were certainly not married! To which he replied, "Wow, I've just never seen a man and a woman work so well together in the kitchen." Can you tell yet that we were made to be together???

The following June I moved to Fort Collins where he had been living since high school and we got an apartment together. We struggled to make ends meet, learn how to live with a person of the opposite sex and figure out how to cohabitate with one another out of wedlock without causing his parents and my mother too much heartbreak. We were engaged the following September (2001).

The year of our wedding was wrought with challenges for us. I was involved in a car accident (Jan 2003) that took six months of chiropractic, physical and massage therapy to get me living pain-free again. Two weeks before our wedding, my grandfather passed away after a short struggle with pancreatic cancer. Two days before our nuptuals, Honey came down with a pretty bad cold. On our way to the rehersal dinner, Honey got in a car accident right before my eyes (I was in the car behind him). He wasn't hurt but we were all pretty shaken up. On our wedding day, Honey was pale, coughing and running a fever (though nobody took the time to take his temp!). As soon as the reception came to a close, I was struck with the sickies myself. We laid in bed for a week after the ceremony to heal and gather strength for our honeymoon. The day after we got back to work from our honeymoon, Honey was laid off from his job. A couple months later he had to have emergency surgery to remove his infected gall bladder.

We learned a lot throughout the course of that year. We learned how to be a couple, how to make decisions together, how to lean on each other for support and strength. We learned about the power of our love for one another and about the dynamics of our newly merged families (his parents and mine). I think that year made us stronger by testing us so much. We knew if we could survive all of that, then we could survive anything...together.

Since then, our lives have been very blessed with his new job, my continuing my education, growing our family of pets, etc. We both know just how fortunate we are and we never take it for granted. We are still learning about ourselves and our differences and similarities. When all is said and done, at the end of the day, my favorite thing to do is just lie in bed on my side, facing him (and he facing me), cuddling our dog in between us and talking about whatever comes to mind.

I love you, Honey. You are the man of my dreams and I will never let you go! Happy anniversary!!!

PS We're going out for a fancy seafood dinner tonight. He's taking tomorrow off from work and we're going to get our bicycles together! YAY!

PPS I saw a chiropractor yesterday and she's helping me heal my back already. I feel 85% better than I did last week. Thank you for all of your well-wishes and support!

|||111876515737606651|||Happy Anniversary To Me!