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I love, love, love to hear how people met and how they fell in love. It’s fascinating how people manage to find each other. The world is full of people, and we meet and pass by so many of them everyday. Growing up I thought about how I’d meet my husband. I’d think up scenarios in my head. I was an avid reader, so I had so many storybook ideas of how I’d find prince charming.
I moved home for the summer after my first year at college. I was planning on getting a job for a few months to save up for my study abroad to Paris that fall. Instead I spent three weeks caught up in sleeping till the afternoon, watching TV, eating, and staying up until all hours of the morning.
I know. Go ahead and judge. But I had spent the last three years in full-time school. Yep, summer school in high school and after graduation. I got my Associates Degree at 17 and entered college three weeks later as a junior. Don’t get me wrong, it was all worth it. But I was due for a little downtime.
During said downtime I got a text from one of my parents’ neighbors and my mom’s old friend. She asked if she could give a guy my phone number. She said he was 22, had bought her Jeep, and my mom knew him.
Nope. See, I was 18 (almost 19) and had been on 5 first dates. I was shy and awkward and didn’t like the idea of a blind date. It took me a few weeks to agree. And I was terrified.
He texted me and after a lot of stress and tears, I picked the restaurant because I am so picky. He picked me up at my parents’ house on May 26, 2010 in his Jeep. Dinner was awkward. I didn’t know what to say…apparently I gave a lot of one-word answers. We went to his parents’ house after and had a fire in the backyard, where it was a bit easier for me to talk.
I’d like to say the rest is history, but it’s not. We went out a lot that summer. Lots of Jeeping, some four-wheeling, a little hiking, some fires… I learned how many people we both knew. He grew up in the neighborhood next to mine, but he was nearly four years older than me. We went to the same schools; I was just three years behind him. We both walked to the same gas station in the summers. We went to the same youth events. He knew my mom, and I went to school with his brother. My sister-in-law even knew who he was.
It was nearly two months before he almost held my hand. We went for a bike ride around the lake and stopped to lay on a grassy hill and watch the clouds. All of the sudden the sprinklers turned on and he grabbed my hand and pulled me up so fast! Turns out he got me up so fast because he was about to hold my hand. He finally did a week later.
We dated for over two months before he kissed me…just a few weeks before I was set to leave for Paris.
Side not here: The idea of going to Paris was exciting and terrifying. After my first semester at college, I started planning for the next year. I didn’t have anyone to live with and was a little jealous of all of the guys my age headed off on missions. I wanted to do something unexpected and awesome. I knew it would put me in debt. I was terrible at speaking French. I wanted to go but felt so anxious about it.
I remember very clearly the day I was down to the wire on deciding whether I would really go. It was overcast and grey. I went out on the back steps to think. I got a text from Spencer, and he was actually outside at his house enjoying the weather. I went back and forth. I didn’t want to drop out of the study abroad “for a guy” and then stop dating and regret it. My sister’s family came over, and we headed to In-N-Out for dinner. My mom mentioned to me how I could put off going to Paris. I could apply the next year. It wasn’t like this was the only chance.
A weight lifted off my shoulders.
We dated all fall. I worked full time and spent almost all my free time with him. We were out together until midnight every night and I worked at 6:30 in the morning. I was so tired! We had fires, went to playgrounds, flew kites, sucked helium out of balloons, went rafting, made mac and cheese in the mountains, and spent so many nights out on the trampoline stargazing and talking.
Yet he continued to date other people. I was anxious to be exclusive, especially before I went back to school in January. No such luck. For New Years we went on a little weekend trip with some of his friends to Jackson Hole. It. Was. Freezing. We had the “worst gravy [Spencer’s] ever had,” went hot tubing, watched for fireworks that never happened, went snowmobiling, and sprained my ankle so bad I couldn’t walk.
When we got home from that trip, my mom said she could tell something was different with us. My mom, who hadn’t thought we would be good together based on how completely different we are. I couldn’t tell anything was different after that trip. I headed off to school the next day with no clear idea of where we stood. As far as I knew, he was still dating other people and I was living an hour away from him at a school with lots of returned missionaries (as my future father-in-law reminded me…which was weird considering I was dating his son…)
I didn’t know how to explain what my not-quite-boyfriend was to my new roommates. Luckily just a few weeks later we finally became exclusive. We spent the spring going back and forth to spend time together. I went home pretty much every weekend and he’d come to visit me one night during the week. It was hard, but somehow we made it work. I buckled down on my homework when I was at school and spent all my time with him when I went home.
Throughout the spring we talked here and there about our future. I don’t remember a single moment when we officially decided to get married, but around April Spencer asked if I wanted to go look at engagement rings. I’d mentioned how I wanted to pick one out since it was something I would be wearing most days for the rest of my life. It was surreal going into a jewelry store to try on engagement rings.
I kind of felt like an impostor. It seemed so crazy to me that I was actually the one who would be getting engaged. We looked around and I got an idea of what I did and didn’t like. We didn’t talk about it after we left the store. In fact, we didn’t really talk about rings or getting married for another month or two. I swear, I was all over the place thinking about what that meant. Sometimes we would pass a jewelry store in the mall and Spencer would take me in. Sometimes we didn’t have plans for when we were together and we’d end up at a jewelry store.
It was always so random and casual, and that frustrated me to no end. I’m a planner and I hated not knowing what was going on, but I also couldn’t push because he was the one who would ask me and had to buy the ring and, you know, had to want to marry me.
It took me a long time to find just what I wanted, and I became increasingly frustrated with the waiting and guessing. I was living an hour away from him at school and needed to start planning my living situation for the next semester. That was awkward to ask him about not knowing what the plan was. He assured me that I should cancel my contract to stay in my apartment.
And then I waited.
As we neared the end of July, I started thinking that I wouldn’t have enough time to plan the autumn wedding I wanted if he didn’t propose soon. In truth, my mom and I had already started planning and looking things up on Etsy and whatnot.
I got an infection in my eye that summer. It was the kind that required me to not wear a contact in one eye, and I didn’t have backup glasses. My dad drove me down to school, and I managed to get around campus with only one contact in. I didn’t wear makeup during that time because it was hard to put it on when I couldn’t see. I was sitting in the basement of one of the buildings at BYU reading Shakespeare when Spencer texted that I should probably wear makeup for our date that night.
Of course, I was suspicious.
He picked me up in the pouring rain with just the bikini top on his four-door Jeep and water running down the inside of the doors. We went up to the base of the Y and watched the storm before deciding to get pizza. By this point I was losing hope for a proposal that night. Spencer was never much of a planner, but I figured he’d at least plan this.
We were sitting in the restaurant waiting to get our pizzas when Spencer casually asked my ring size again. Oh, I was so frustrated. He just really didn’t seem to care and was dragging everything out!
We took our pizzas back to the base of the Y, and he blocked off a little dirt parking area with the Jeep. It had stopped raining, and we sat in camping chairs watching the sun set. He was like, “oh, I almost forgot, I have something for you.” He told me to finish my piece of pizza and he’d go get it out of his center console. He had me turn around, and when I turned back, he was on one knee with the ring I wanted.
I said, “Are you serious?!”
I had been expecting a proposal for months. I really hadn’t thought he could surprise me! Of course, I said yes. We took pictures and told our families, picked a date, and made it Facebook official. He had actually really planned it out up the canyon with friends hidden to take pictures, but the rain changed things, and he just went with it.
It didn’t feel real for a long time. Sometimes I look down at my ring and still can’t believe it’s real. We were engaged for 2.5 months, and it was not fun. I mean, I liked planning the wedding and seeing our invites and whatnot, but it was so stressful. I moved home for fall semester because we got married in October. I was commuting an hour to Provo, taking a full set of credits, planning a wedding, finding an apartment, cleaning said apartment and moving things in, and anxious to be married.
Our wedding day was perfect. I’d stressed enough and just let it all go. We were married on October 20, 2011 in the Salt Lake Temple. It was sunny with a slight chill in the air, and the leaves had changed colors. Our reception was beautiful with white pumpkin centerpieces; purple, green, and twinkly lights; a candy bar; and a delicious chocolate and mint cake with a Jeep driving up it.
This week marks 9 years since we met. We’ve been married for 7.5 years. I’ve graduated from college, worked in a warehouse, and become an editor. We lived in our apartment for 2.5 years before buying our house. We have two adorable little boys who test my limits every day. Spencer has had a few jobs and more cars than I can count.
I have always been a shy, awkward person, and as much as I always wanted to get married and have kids, I had a hard time believing that would really happen for me. Yet here we are. The only guy I’ve ever kissed, or even gone on a second date with, became my husband. How he puts up with me, I’ll never know!
