Project Marriage Challenge: How It All Began

I just found another blog sharing thing via Life Without Pink that I figure I can participate in since it's all about marriage and I'm married, and I'm sure I have no shortage of things to say on the matter!

The first "challenge" is to write about your love story.

Mark and I met when he was 25 and I had just turned 20.  At first he seemed like just a lot of talk.  He had so many stories!  As we started getting to know each other I realized he had quite a bit of substance...and I grew attracted to his substance.

We moved in together 5 months after we met and haven't lived apart since.  We started talking about marriage pretty early on in our relationship, but it wasn't until my 23rd birthday when Mark officially proposed with a ring and everything.  Probably would've been sooner if we hadn't had little things like kidney failure and organ transplant to deal with first.

See, a year after we moved in together Mark's kidneys failed and he went on dialysis.  We had already put in all the work to get him listed on the kidney and pancreas transplant list, but the next 6 months were awful.  Turned out Mark didn't have a very good doctor at the time who didn't put 2 and 2 together and notice that Mark wasn't getting adequate dialysis so he got very sick.  Thankfully, he only had to wait 6 months before compatible organs became available.

Shortly after his successful transplant my best friend Jen asked me when the wedding would be, now that Mark was doing so well.  I told her we'll see after his first transplant anniversary.  Well, that anniversary was in the same month as my birthday.  We decided to have a dual celebration with family and close friends, dinner at TGI Fridays.

Since this was also going be my birthday party and people would be giving me gifts that night, I told Mark I wanted him to wait to give me his gift on my birthday.  Little did I know that if I hadn't said that, he would've proposed to me then, with everyone.

The anniversary/birthday celebration was still wonderful without the proposal, though!  On my birthday we decided to go out to dinner again, just the 2 of us.  Right before we were set to leave he gave me my card.  It was a sweet card expressing his love and happy birthday wishes to me.  But after he signed it, he wrote "PS: Will you marry me?"  I looked up at him and he was holding out my engagement ring!

I was so freaking excited!  At the restaurant I made every attempt, with totally unnecessary hand gestures, to get everyone in the place to notice my ring.  Look, look, I'm engaged and this is my ring and my fiance!  Oh, and it's my birthday!

We got married a little over a year later on July 18, 1998.  Although I'd probably change a lot about the actual wedding if I had it to do over again, the day went off pretty much without a hitch (if you don't count the heat) and it was really special.  We then had a fabulous honeymoon in San Diego!