Weddings

My brother is getting married on Saturday, so it kind of takes me back over the course of my own relationship with my wife. It has been an interesting road so far, and it was nice to relive the memories.

As a lot of you already know, I met my future wife my freshman year at Brigham Young University. I had been settling into my first semester there, still kind of weirded out by the feel and culture of being in Utah (more on that another day). I had joined the Quark forums on a whim, and wound up being contacted by the leader of the writing group out of the blue. She convinced me to attend a meeting, in spite of my anti-social tendencies, and I decided to try it out.

When I arrived, I think that there had been a side activity planned. In addition to the traditional ripping apart and rebuilding of stories, there was a game of four way chess. It was at that point that my wife to be caught my eye. You see, we were all talking of nerd stuff as we played, just laughing and joking around. I noticed that this one particular girl to my right kept muttering to herself as she planned out each move, and in my own annoying way, teased her about sounding like an evil genius. She laughed, and I discovered quite possibly the world’s most beautiful smile.

We quickly became good friends over the rest of the school year. To be honest, she was half the reason I attended half the Quark activities I went to, from film forums to writing meetings. The discovery that occasionally, when I was walking to the building where the group met, I would meet her on the way and get to walk with her and talk for a while was only another golden opportunity, as was the fact that we randomly ended up in the same Humanities class together.

It was blatantly obvious to pretty much everyone that we developed feelings for each other fairly early on. It soon became a joke to try and get us to go out, to the point where the characters we created for a group writing project somehow got shoehorned into a romance. Before I left on my mission, however, we were both still too uncertain, nerdy and awkward to do anything about it. So I left for two years, not really sure she would be there when I got back, but really hoping she would be.

My hopes were buoyed by the fact that she wrote me while I was tromping around Mexico, even sending me a package or two along the way. One of the best gifts was a mug that had a picture of the writing group on it, which I still have. I quickly grew to love getting letters from her, and some of the darkest times of my mission were when she stopped writing for a time. I think I still have them all tucked away somewhere.

When I got home, of course, my mom asked me who exactly all the letters were from. I got kind of evasive, since I hadn’t even seen her for years, which gave my mother a clue that this one was special. I came back to the Y, and she visited my apartment, and despite some awkward moments (looking at you Lambson) we started up our friendship again. Soon enough we started to visit each other (though she’ll tell you I took forever) and then started dating. We were exclusive about five days after she mentioned that she had gone on a date with someone else, and engaged a few months after that. The August after my sophomore year of college, we were married at the St George Temple.

Our relationship has been a wonderful blessing, and though we’ve already had our ups and downs, I have never doubted that she is the best thing in my life. I’m a lucky man to have her as a companion, and my fondest wish is to be by her side forever. So as my brother and his fiancé take this new step in their own relationship, I just want to wish them all the best, and hope that they are able to deal with the struggles and challenges of marriage at least as well, if not better, than we have. Stick with her, bro, she’s worth it.

And to the rest of you having to deal with the sappy reminiscing, oh well. Deal with it. :) I’ll get back to blowing things up in my imagination on Monday. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you around.