Ten Years and a Love Story

Today is our TEN YEAR wedding anniversary! We got married at the ripe old age of 20, and it was the best decision I've ever made!

I thought I'd share our love story in honor of this momentous occasion:

I met my husband, Max, for the first time during freshman orientation in college.

We were going around in a circle, introducing ourselves and saying where we were from. This was a tricky question for me since my family started out in California, but moved to France when I was seven. And then, to make things even more complicated, I attended a boarding school in Germany for high school.

So when it came around to my turn, I said, "California, France, and Germany," and that's how I made the nerdiest first impression with my future husband.

I didn't see much of him after that, even though we lived in the same dorm. We started hanging out rather randomly in April of that year. I sat next to him at a dorm picnic and asked him, by way of an ice breaker, if he was Canadian. He wasn't.

Our relationship really kicked off on my birthday, when we got into an impromptu cake fight, chasing each other, laughing, and getting frosting everywhere.

Shortly after that, our first year of college had ended, and I flew back to Germany to spend the summer with my family. Max and I emailed each other back and forth during that time, and checking my inbox was the absolute highlight of my day.

I half-jokingly invited him to come over and visit with me and my family. You know, because it's not like Michigan and Germany share a border or anything. To my utter surprise, he did! One day during his two week trip, we toured the World War 1 trenches, and it was there that we "officially" started dating. August 10th, 2001.

We held hands. We cuddled. We hugged. But we didn't kiss.

I had told him right off the bat that I wasn't ready to kiss him yet. (Truthfully I had never kissed anyone before, and the idea was terrifying!) He was a trooper about it!

As the months progressed, we knew we were meant for each other, and we knew we wanted to get married soon. We decided to save our first kiss for the altar.

We were married on August 10th, 2002, precisely one year after we started dating. (I like to tell people it's because we're organized, but actually it was just a coincidence!) By this time, I was more than ready to kiss him :).

So there we were, standing at the altar: his dad and my dad (both pastors) up at the front, conducting the ceremony. It occurred to me right before dad said: "You may kiss the bride" that I was going to have my very first kiss ever right in front of all of these people!

I leaned in for the kiss. I thought it was going to be a huge, romantic moment in my life. And it was! But at the time I can only remember thinking: "Gee, this is wet!" He likes to say that I wouldn't let go of him when he tried to pull away... but that's his side of the story!

I'm glad we saved our first kiss (I can hold this over my daughter's head someday...). I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, though. We were lucky in that we had a short engagement. But it definitely made our story special, and I believe that it deepened our relationship. Ten years and we're still going strong!