Wedding Wednesday: The Beginning

What better way to start off wedding talk than a story about how it all began?

Let's go back three years, to the summer of 2009. I had just been accepted to the Masters program in Speech and Communication Disorders at CSU East Bay and the plan was to continue to work but scale my hours back to 30 per week. Hoping to minimize the amount of debt I would be incurring, I cut every luxury from my budget: Internet, Starbucks, (largely unused) gym membership, and (mostly a waste of money) dating websites. Sure, I'd met a few nice guys among the weirdos and creeps who lurk online, but at this point in my life I'd pretty much accepted that it was just going to be me and David, and I was ok with that. He is, after all, pretty good company. And I would have my future career as a speech therapist to fill whatever void I was feeling in my personal life.

So I canceled Match, and eHarmony. And whatever other fee-based dating websites I'd tried-there are lots out there, though I think it's really the same lonely hearts out there on all the same websites.

But perhaps there was a tiny little part of me that wasn't willing to give up, because I decided to check out a free website I'd heard some of my fellow single moms talk about called "Plenty of Fish". (I know, sounds totally cheesy right? I'm with you there).

I decided, in the weeks that remained before I was overwhelmed with school, work and child, that if I was to have any chance at meeting someone decent I would have to approach it with the motto that has carried me through my entire adult life: anything worth having is worth working for. So I set a goal for myself: 5 emails a day. I would find 5 guys who seemed interesting and send them an email, just to say hi and start a conversation.

Wouldn't you know Josh is the first, and only, guy I emailed? And only because he had mentioned camping with his kids in his profile and I had been wanting to take David camping? Turns out he had recently moved back to the area from Virginia and hadn't gone camping locally yet, but we found plenty to talk about (well, mostly *he* talked and *I* listened; our first phone conversation lasted 5 hours and only ended when my cell phone battery died. anyone who knows Josh knows he's a talker!) and after about two weeks of nightly marathon phone sessions, we met in person and have hardly been apart since.

So here we are 3 years later, engaged and ready to spend our lives together. All thanks to a cheesy website and a whim :-)

Do me a favor though-if he tells you I picked him up, kindly remind him I was only asking about camping! ;-)