If you're reading this, we're getting married today!
Happy wedding day! I love you so much and wanted to carve out a slice of the internet to celebrate the story of our love that you can revisit wherever, whenever (if you have internet anyways lol)
Click here to read from the very beginning!
Click here to reminisce on the early days for our relationship!
Click to read about our trip to France and the proposal that got us here!
Click to read my message to you on our wedding day!
Reading back through our earliest messages, it's hard not to get sucked in and read them all from the very beginning. It’s so wild to think that we were once strangers, especially since I felt like I had known you forever from the moment we met. I’d never hit it off with anyone as quickly as I did with you. I love revisiting those early conversations to relive the cautious probing wed did about each other’s thoughts and feelings as we tried (and often succeeded) to make the other laugh and smile. It sounds cliché but I knew there was something different about you as soon as we started talking and I haven’t wanted to stop yapping with you ever since.
On our first date, I was so nervous that I honestly didn’t even realize how warm I was getting in the Texas sun as I sat at our table wearing a flannel shirt outdoors with no shade. (In my defense, it was the fanciest shirt I had, and you’ve helped significantly upgrade my wardrobe since then.) Hearing your laugh in person made me feel even warmer inside. Your smile was intoxicating, and I would have gladly passed out from heat exhaustion if it meant I could spend even a little more time with you. I’m grateful that you were gracious and didn’t tease me excessively for not seizing the massive opportunity to kiss you after I walked you back to your car.
Thankfully, I managed to redeem myself with our subsequent movie date. When you arrived, I was nervously pacing outside, and you noticed me before I could see you. You took out your phone to take a picture of me, but of course, in my obliviousness, you convinced me that you were actually taking a picture of a man’s massive calves who was walking in front of you. (To my knowledge, you’ve never done this before and haven’t done it again, but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.)
We watched a movie called Amsterdam, and I think it was pretty good. However, in all honesty, I hardly paid attention after we started holding hands. We walked back to your car, but this time, I was determined to kiss you. As you may recall, we shared our first kiss here, but it was after my first failed attempt where I only kissed about 10% of your lip. Thankfully, you were gracious and gave me another chance, and this time, I didn’t miss. Again, as cliché as it sounds, I’ve never felt sparks like that before in my life. I’m happy to report that my accuracy has improved significantly since then. I appreciate the ample opportunities I’ve had to practice since that night.
To conclude this chapter, the last memory I want to revisit is our third date, where I introduced you to my friends at Muellerfest. Despite our short time together, I had already developed strong feelings for you. Seeing you effortlessly charm my closest friends by simply being yourself made my heart feel so full. Since then, our bond has only grown stronger, our love has deepened, and we’ve begun to build our life together. I am incredibly grateful for every moment we've shared and look forward to so many more with you!
Despite the distance between our apartments, we found ourselves spending almost every free waking moment together in no time. Even before we uttered those three words, I think you can see in hindsight how deeply in love I was with you based on the significant mileage I put on my car during that period in combination with my aversion to driving that you are of course very aware of now (seeing as you’re the Driving Duchess to my Passenger Princess). Regardless, I would happily travel as much as necessary to see you to this day (although I much prefer living under the same roof like we do now).
Even when we were apart, our conversations never stopped. Whether it was texting, calling, or FaceTiming we were always on each other’s minds and talking whenever we could. I thoroughly enjoyed learning everything about you. Our conversations never felt forced or like we were filling the silence with small talk. We joked about both of us having over 300 IQ scores pretty early on, but I truly was blown away but how intelligent you are. I genuinely loved hearing your thoughts, feelings, and getting to know your unique perspective of the world. Besides being a musical genius, I could sense that your emotional intelligence was also something you had dedicated a significant amount of time and effort into cultivating. When we met, you were going through a difficult time, and you were open about it. I’m incredibly grateful that you allowed me to be a part of your life and that you felt comfortable enough to be vulnerable, in turn it made me feel safe to be vulnerable as well.
In another showcase of how utterly oblivious I am, I thought nothing of it when you would start to say “I love you… Tater Tot” with a slight pause in between. I had never been a cat guy so I just genuinely thought you loved your cat a lot and wanted to let her know. Despite that, I think we were both bursting at the seams trying not to say the L word “too early”, which I think was probably fair in hindsight but I knew It was already an unspoken truth at that point. I will never forget lying in your bed across from you as you tried to hold back tears when you told me you loved me. It’s hard to describe just how that made me feel, it was like an intense warmth engulfed my entire body and I never wanted it to end. Saying that I loved you back felt like lifting an immense weight off my chest, or I guess more accurately, pointing out the enormous elephant sitting in the corner of the room.
As if we hadn’t already been obsessed with each other at that point it only grew stronger from there. I knew it was serious business when I brought my Playstation 5 to your apartment instead of leaving it at my own (ok so maybe there were other signs, but still, big deal). Despite how run down that apartment complex was (shout out Hellwood) I have such fond memories of that place all because of you. We cooked our first meals together, introduced each other to our favorite movies and shows, and learned a valuable lesson in not losing keys (sorry about that by the way, glad it all worked out though).
My introduction to your family was nearly as quick as the rate we fell for each other, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Eating brunch at Snooze that October I never imagined that I would be opening presents with you under the Christmas tree just a short couple of months later. Your family made me feel so welcome at a time where it wasn’t really possible for me to spend time with my family at Christmas. Obviously Adelaide had to cause some drama and go pick a fight with a skunk while we tried to watch The Sound of Music, but in hindsight it made that beautiful day even more memorable.
I’m definitely skipping over a lot of lore here and jumping around in general, but on the topic of your family and me not expecting things, I never would have guessed that I would be invited back to your parent’s house as a resident as opposed to just a guest at Christmas. I was definitely nervous about that proposition at first but I’m so grateful to have had that opportunity. It’s never easy living with your parents as an adult, but they’re generosity helped us get to where we are now, and I feel so blessed to have had the chance to grow even closer to your family as you and I grew closer together.
This period of our relationship had its ups and downs. We learned a lot about ourselves, each other, and what it means to be the best partner and human we could be. Any and all pain along the way was undoubtedly worth the gain in the end. I’m so glad that through it all we kept improving our communication and strengthening our love. Every day just cemented more and more the fact that I knew you were the person I wanted, I was meant to, spend the rest of my life with (spoiler alert for the next section, sorry…)
I feel like a broken record saying this, but I truly never expected that I would ever go to France, much less propose to the love of my life there. In my defense, I never expected a lot of incredible things to happen to me, starting with meeting you, so there’s a reason I keep saying that repeatedly in this novel of a website.
Despite long flights, broken fans, unobservant children, and blistered feet I will always remember that trip as a beautiful journey that forever changed my life for the better. It was so beautiful getting to experience a new country with you for the very first time. There was so much to see and do, and we did a lot of it, but ultimately I only had one mission in mind that whole trip.
As you may have realized, I tend to be nervous at times (I hope you were sitting down for that shocking revelation), so after a long week of traveling and finally arriving at the location where I would pop the question, I was even more skittish than normal. In hindsight it’s pretty funny how anxious and in a hurry I was since my odds of you saying yes were pretty solid, but I was clutching that engagement ring like it would disappear if I let go for even a moment and pacing like a madman, but I was intent on proposing to you in the most romantic way possible that day.
In my quest for the perfect proposal, I had researched ahead of time, watching virtual tours and using interactive maps to locate a beautiful and photo worthy spot to propose to you that day. Armed with a pack of your coolest students, we navigated the maze of greenery as everyone tried to rein me in to take candid photos of us strolling, which was made harder by my frantic pace. We finally got to the spot I had in my mind, and I’ll never forget looking to the beautiful fountain I had seen online completely shut off and being worked on by men in orange vests.
As the French say though, c'est la vie. Despite things not going as planned, we were surrounded by beautiful Forget Me Nots on that gravel path and it was a beautiful day. I got on one knee and read you the question I had been waiting to ask for a long time:
"I can hardly remember what life was like before you. It feels like just yesterday I was sweating in a flannel on our first date trying my hardest to be funny to hear your beautiful laugh as much as I could. I love you more than I thought it was possible to love someone. I've learned and grown with you so much already and I never want to stop. I can hardly remember what life was like before you, and i'm hoping by giving you this ring I never have to remember. Will you marry me?"
As you probably remember, your answer was yes (thank goodness, that would have been an awkward flight home), but to round out the list of things I didn’t expect you pulled the ultimate reverse uno card and propose right back to me. That was one of the happiest moments of my life, and I will never forget embracing you in that moment and the overwhelming joy I felt. I truly want to go back one day and walk back on that path with you hand in hand, and maybe if we're lucky this time they'll have turned the fountain on.
All of that leads us to today. I am beyond excited to watch you walk down that aisle today and look into your beautiful eyes as we make a commitment to love and cherish each other forever in front of our friends and family. I love you more than I ever thought it was possible to love someone, and I can’t believe that our story is really just beginning at this point. I know that whatever life throws at us we can face it together, I am so thrilled that I have the privilege of building a life with you and I can’t wait to see where life takes us.
I love you more than words can describe Lee Ashlee, and I hope that this collection of 1’s and 0’s that make up this website can help express even a fraction of the love I have for you. Whether you're reading this on our wedding day or at some time in the future, I hope you can have this as a reminder of that love.
Sincerely, your baby man forever,
Scott