Every couple has a love story, and one of our favorite parts of being wedding photographers is hearing new stories every day! Now we think it’s time for us to share ours. This is for you to get to know us – all about us – so that you can understand major milestones in our lives, and the impactful moments that have shaped us as people and as a team!
This is how it’s going to work: we will mutually agree on prompts, moments, or experiences to write about, and then we do it 100% separately. These are our totally unmitigated, non-agreed-upon perspectives on the various situations that have peppered our lives. We hope you enjoy!
Part One: The First Time We Met
high school daze:
He said:
For whatever reason, Holly is under the impression that she asked me to be official. That is not accurate. If she had been the one to ask, why would I have spent that evening in mid-May sweaty and uncomfortable? Why would I have left choir practice (full disclosure, I don’t remember exactly where we were coming from) a little early to walk her to her parents’ minivan? Why would I distinctly remember leaning up against the side of said minivan in a desperate attempt to look relaxed and overwhelmingly chill? I was neither of those things. We’d been texting on and off since the middle of April. We’d hung out a couple of times and had a phenomenal time. I really, really liked this girl. I wanted to make things official, so I did. By asking her. By myself. Of my own volition. So don’t believe anything else.
So that was that – then we were officially dating! The blossoming of a scandalous sophomore-junior relationship heading into the Summer of 2011. We spent our remaining year together of school hanging out in courtyard, getting lunch together off-campus (Taco Shack and Central Market were staples), and occasionally cutting class to leave school early or treat ourselves to a long lunch. I’m assuming Holly is going to omit that part, but it was an important part of our fairytale coming-of-age story!
The summer was incredible – even though we were both working at the time, her at Panera and me at Best Buy (and I was in summer school), we managed to see each other almost every day and push the limits of my curfew what felt like every night. It was surreal, enjoying spending this much time with another person. And we got to go into the following school year (her senior, my junior) the exact same way. The truth is, I couldn’t get enough of spending time with her.
She said:
For the record: I definitely asked AJ out first. He couldn’t spit it out so I just said, “Okay, so are we like official?” The rest of that summer is just a blur, but there are little memories here and there. Driving around in my parents’ minivan, pushing the curfew limit, milkshakes at Hut’s. I soon got a job at Panera (ruined Panera forever for me…) and AJ would stop in, and I would sneak him those giant chocolate chip cookies. I’d bring home extras to give him at school.
While I was supposed to be making lists of colleges, I was focusing on my entries to the AP art competition and choreographing my senior dance solo. AJ was in choir and one thing I’ll never forget is one of AJ’s choir recitals which was Disney themed (what could be more amazing than that, seriously!). He had a duet with a girl and they sang A Whole New World from Aladdin and the whole time I was thinking, “Damnit I wish I was Jasmine right now.”
Before I started high school I remember my dad telling me, “These are going to be the best four years of your life!” (He told me the exact same thing about college, so now I see he was just trying to hype me up all the time.) I think I’m not alone when I say they were not the best 4 years. High school was full of so much uncertainty, hard decisions, and teenage anxieties. I really don’t think I could have survived the last half if it weren’t for AJ. He made it more than tolerable, he made it fun. But still, I was nervous about finishing up Senior year. What did that mean for us?
Keep reading!
you said: