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Hi Friends!

Today’s post is going to be a little different than usual. Please excuse me for a second because this post might be a little bit lovey dovey & sappy, ha! The reason for the sappiness is because today is Dylan and my anniversary. I thought it would be fun to share on the blog today the story of how we met and started dating. The story still makes me laugh every time I tell it to someone, just because it’s so crazy the way life moves you along and works things out when you least expect it.

Before Dylan and I started dating, I was absolutely not “looking” for a relationship… I feel like I had basically given up on a serious relationship, actually. After a few relationships that were very wrong, I was absolutely not “looking for love.” I had also gotten so comfortable with being single and felt like I was completely fine on my own. I now believe that it’s very important to be okay on your own before entering into a serious relationship!

It’s kind of like how people always say “just when you stop looking, you find the right person!” This was exactly the case for me. If you are out there and are feeling like you’ve given up on finding that right person, I’m here to say that they might just fall into your life when you least expect it.

Now, for how we met–

To tell the story, we gotta take it back about 6 years….

It’s the first day of freshman orientation at University of the Pacific and I’m beyond excited to be starting college and all that jazz. I’m a nervous 18 year old that can’t WAIT to be living on my own. I definitely think I know everything about life and have everything figured out (I WAS WRONG). Oh, to be 18!!

Anyway, you know the groups that you are broken up into during freshman orientation, where you’re forced to awkwardly shake hands and make small talk? Well… my group happened to have just about the cutest TALL dreamy blonde waterpolo player in it, named Dylan. I remember running to my Mom (who was with me during orientation) at one of the group breaks to tell her how my group really hit the jackpot because he was in it and also to gush about not knowing how to talk to him. Pretty sure I used the words “he’s the most attractive person I’ve ever seen,” followed by turning bright red. The funny part here is that he says he did the SAME exact thing with his Mom, who was also there!! If you know us, you know that we’re both really close with our Mamas, ha.

So anyway, orientation continues and Dylan adds me on Facebook and gets my phone number in a friendly way. I actually didn’t think he was interested at the time, but it turns out he was nervous to talk to me?? This is what he tells me now, haha.
Soon school starts and to my surprise, we also have a class together! Seems like the perfect opportunity to become friends, right?  Not for us, apparently. We ended up only speaking a few words to each other here and there, turns out we both thought the other one wasn’t interested!! After about a month at UOP, I heard through the grapevine that Dylan had transferred to a different college because he wasn’t loving UOP and missed Southern CA. Time moved us on and I ended up moving to Nashville after two years at UOP to finish my degree at Belmont University.

After living in Nashville for a few years, that same cute blonde guy from freshman orientation decided he was going to add me on Snapchat. LOL. He claims that his phone actually “auto requested” every contact he had on Snap! Do you think he was creepin’?? (;

Of course, I totally remembered who he was. After that, he started texting me and calling me. Eventually we were talking all the time, just really as friends. I secretly thought that he was this dream guy who I was never going to actually meet in person again. Fast forward 5 months and he ends up coming to visit me in Northern California while I’m home for summer! It was so crazy because he drove up the 9 hours to see me, basically on a whim. God definitely had a plan though, because ever since then we have been inseparable. After that summer, I had one more semester of college in Nashville to finish and he had one more at UCI in Southern California. We visited as much as we possibly could and as soon as I finished up finals, Dylan moved me back to California. The rest is history!!

Being with Dylan has taught me so much about love, relationships, and life. Throughout the last two years, we’ve gone through a lot of the “adulting” stuff together and have been really lucky to have one another to lean on. We’ve been by each other’s sides as we experience all the real life stuff like paying bills, doing a zero-based budget, trying to build and further our careers, learning to cook, finding a home, and soooooo many more things. It’s not always picture perfect and relationships definitely take work but are so worth if it’s with the right person. I am very grateful to have him in my life as my best friend and partner!

Thank you to our good friend & super talented photographer Katie Stuart, for capturing these shots.