Welcome to our Wedding

His Version: We matched on Hinge and I can’t remember much of the conversation at this point but two of the things I remember were a lot of travel photos and a picture of Lauren holding a big sword. Saying yes to sushi for our first date was also a very important decision. We went to Baba Sushi on Park Ave in Worcester. Lauren was running late (this did not turn out to be a one time occurrence) and it was in the middle of the pandemic, so going out to eat was strange and meeting a doctor seemed like maybe a poor choice. The highlight of the night for me was when we started showing each other all our different travel photos and going into a great discussion of where we still wanted to go. It turns out it is everywhere. The next thing I knew the restaurant was closing and we had to leave. Her Version: Like all good romances these days, we swiped right (and Hinge truly was made to be deleted!). In what I would soon learn to be typical TJ fashion, he decided to take a trip to Key West and we immediately found we had a love of travel in common. When he got back to Massachusetts, he took the two-week quarantine VERY seriously (#COVID) and we finally were able to meet up for sushi on December 10, 2020. We ended up chatting until curfew (again, #COVID) when the restaurant kicked us out. Unfortunately the next day, I came down with the flu and felt so bad telling him since he had taken allllll the precautions to make sure I hadn’t gotten sick from him. Luckily he remained healthy and the rest is history! The next week, I went to North Carolina and broke my three-date rule and ended up telling my family about him early – I just had a feeling he was special!

His Version: I had planned our proposal for London. After researching and consulting with the photographer, I chose an overlook in Greenwich Park near the Prime Meridian with the London Skyline as the backdrop. The photographer first suggested 7AM so we would have the park to ourselves but as it was an hour from our hotel, I knew that was early for Lauren so we pushed it back an hour. That was still too early and we spent the hour-long tube ride not talking but stopping for coffee in Greenwich cheered us up a bit. I still spent most of the time hoping the rain would hold off. It was a 15 min uphill walk to the observatory and Lauren was not very happy with the early morning hike either. On our way up, I saw the photographer and that we were going the wrong way and tried to go back down but the grass was wet and someone refused to go down the hill. Jimmy, our photographer, noticed the issue and began to head uphill towards us. We took a selfie and then I asked Jimmy to take a photograph of us. He did with Lauren’s phone and once he asked to take one with his camera, that was to be my cue but I fumbled the ring and held the box upside down. The rain continued to hold off for the next hour as we had a photo session. It started to rain very hard as soon as Jimmy dropped us off at a meat pie shop for lunch. I won’t forget that meal - I made the mistake of getting eel gravy on my pie. Lauren’s mood had seemed to improve at some point during the morning. Her Version: TJ got us tickets to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London in November 2022. The play, while amazing, made for a pretty late night. When the alarm went off the next morning at the crack of dawn, I was just a *little* bit cranky. TJ knows I’m not a morning person, so why would he plan such an early morning after a late night? And of course it’s the only day of rain for the whole trip! And for what? To go look at some park? Ugh! So we catch the 7 am train and ride it mostly in silence (have I mentioned I don’t do mornings well?), grab our Starbucks, and head into Greenwich Park to the Prime Meridian. The path to the lookout was very steep and, being the delight that I am, I continued to complain. We finally made it to the top and TJ says to me “Let’s take a selfie” – which isn’t unusual so I was still unsuspecting. But instead of leaving it at that, he determines we need someone else to take our photo. Again, not completely out of the norm, but usually at this point TJ’s extreme dislike of talking to strangers means I have to ask someone. So I look behind us to the school children on a field trip with their teachers and identify them as our potential photographer. But TJ decides that the tourist who was taking photos in the grass down the hill would be a better person to ask. And again, delightful me says “I’m not walking DOWN that hill – you just had me walk UP the hill and the grass is slippery and I don’t have the shoes for that!” It’s a good thing he loves me. By this point, the tourist had started making his way uphill and was close enough for TJ to ask him to take our photo. I hand him my phone and we snap a photo. He makes some comment about how he’ll take our photo with his nice camera and I’m getting confused, but roll with it. He starts taking photos of us with his camera and I realize about that time that TJ hasn’t taken his hand out of his pocket in a few minutes and his body language is abnormal. I turn to look at him and as I do, he gets down on one knee. The school children on their field trip start clapping and cheering. I think TJ said some lovely things, but honestly it was all a blur from there. I do know it happened at 9:34 am exactly, thanks to my Apple Watch recording a hike that shows my heart rate instantly skyrocketing. Easiest yes of my life! We spent the next hour taking photos with Jimmy, the professional photographer/”tourist” that TJ had hired. It was perfect! Looking back, I should have known. But I honestly had no idea!