Our Valentine's Day Wedding + How We Met

Happy Valentine's Day, my friends! In honor of the day 'o love, I wanted to force you down memory lane with me. In addition to Valentine's Day, today is also our wedding anniversary! Joel and I got married 7 years ago TODAY. Huzzah!!

**ALL PHOTOS ON THIS POST ARE BY LISA BLUME PHOTOGRAPHY**

Let me set the stage... we met in November of 2008 and got engaged 7 months later in June of 2009. Then married 8 months later on February 14th 2010. It's what may have been called a "whirlwind romance." But when you know, you know. YOU, KNOW? And trust me I had stalked him around the earth long enough to know....I KNOW.

Alright, grab a wine slash coffee slash red bull and settle in for the story of how we met. (I'M SURE YOU'VE BEEN DYING TO KNOW)...

Back when I was a frosh in college I decided to go on Match.com. Never mind the fact I was 19 years old, I WAS OVER COLLEGE GUYS. So I go on Match.com and fill out the whole quiz and it's supposed to tell you who your 100% match is within a 50 mi. radius. Well, it tells me Joel. I was shocked! I knew who he was because our moms were friendly and his brother was in my elementary school class, but I had never met him. So I *wink* at him (that's match lingo, right there), and nothing happens. So I was like blah...whatever. (Turns out his profile was inactive and he was dating someone.) I start dating someone else (not from Match) and 2.5 years go by.

One day, my senior year of college I'm sitting in the library with one of my girlfriends talking about, what else, hot guys. Newly-ish single, I pull Joel up on Facebook (see: superior stalking skillz) and tell her the Match story. Like any good girlfriend, she totally encourages me to friend him but I said, "No that's so weird...."

Fast forward two weeks later she's like, "Did you ever friend that guy?" I tell her NAHHHH. Again she tells me I should friend him, if for nothing else the fact it makes a good story. So like any impressionable college kid it only takes 2x of peer pressuring before I'm like FRIEND REQUEST SENT, GIRLLLLLL!

About a week goes by and I get a message on Facebook. It's from Joel. He says, and I quote, "Do I know you?" And I was like EXSQUEEZE me SON. DO you know me? DO. YOU. KNOW. MEEEEEEE?? Except I didn't do that I was like Oh. Well kind of-- I know your brother!! (Meanwhile I'm dying a slow death on the inside.) Editor's Note: Joel would like you to know he didn't mean DO I KNOW YOU?? He meant, DO I KNOW YOU? BECAUSE I NEED TO KNOW YOU. Nice save.

So we exchanged a few well-crafted messages on FB and then he's like, "Hey. I don't use fb much so what's your email?" AND THAT MY FRIENDS IS WHEN I KNEW I WAS LIVING MY BEST LIFE. Once the messages got to email I knew my charm, and wit, and STALKING had won him over. We exchanged emails for another week and then he asked me to dinner. AND THE REST, as they say, IS HISTORY.

Felicity (6) asked us the other night how we met. I said, "Mommy is really good on the computer so I found Daddy and asked to be his friend." She's like "Then what happened?" Joel says, "Then Dad asked Mom to dinner." Felicity says, "Then what happened?" And I said, " Then Dad just kept asking me to dinner, over and over and over until one day, we got married!" She says, "OHHH MYYY GOSHHHH THAT IS LIKE SO ROMANTIC." And it's true. 7 years of marriage and 3 kids later I can safely say that "friending" Joel on Facebook is the best decision I ever made.

(P.S. If you're even still reading and you care. About 4 months in to dating we are driving along and Joel's like I need to tell you something. I like OH SNAP WHAT. He's like, "I was on Match.com." I said, "I see your Match.com and RAISE YOU ONE because I too was on Match, AND YOU WERE MY 100% MATCH!!" He almost drove off the road, naturally. Editor's Note: I'm NO DUMMY I wasn't going to LEAD with being a stalker. I slow played that. By then I KNEW I HAD WON HIM, so it was a safe space to let me stalking flag fly. We had a good laugh about it and talked about how we were a #missedopportunity to be on their commercial)

If you learn nothing here just know PERSISTENCE PAYS OFF. STALK PEOPLE UNTIL THEY LOVE YOU. Editor's Note: That's a joke...OR IS IT!?!?! Also: Match.com knows what they're doing.

OK SO FOR THE WEDDING PART. We got married just days after the insane blizzard of 2010. I was worried that the wedding wouldn't even happen because were getting dumped with snow. But GOD IS GOOD because the day of our wedding the sun was shining, it was 50 degrees and people WERE READY TO PARTY. But before the party, the most important part-- the sacrament of marriage!

We got married at Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Maryland. It was a place that evoked a lot of warm fuzzies for me, because Joel and I went their frequently while we were dating. The priest there was awesome and when we got engaged I knew the wedding had to be there!

Our reception was at The Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner. They did an amazing job of capturing everything I wanted the reception room to look like! And speaking of capturing it all--our photographer was incredible. Lisa Blume was an integral part of making our wedding day successful. In addition to wedding pics, she designed our save the date, place cards, table numbers, thank you notes, the list goes on. Any paper detail the wedding had was thanks to her. She basically moonlighted as our wedding planner. If you need a photographer in the DC area I highly recommend her!! Plus she's like the nicest human ever!

Obviously getting married on Valentine's Day can be percieved as cheesy. But we had a good reason! My grandparents had also gotten married on Valentine's Day in 1942. It made me so happy to honor them throughout our wedding. (I talk about that a little in THIS post too).

We had their wedding picture outside of the reception doors for all to see!

Instead of a guest book we had guests "send us" Valentine's. This was hilarious because you can tell as the night continued (and the drinks continued), people got more and more...colorful with their valentines messages.

Our colors were fuchsia and grey. Two colors to this day that I be obsessed with. I'm quite proud of the fact we achieved all these fun deets, because our wedding was PP (pre-Pinterest). Aka A DARK TIME IN THE LIVES OF WOMEN.

Our tables were named after famous couples in history!

The Executive Pastry Chef at The Ritz Carlton did an AMAZING JOB with our cake. I remember thinking it was too pretty to eat. BUT THAT DIDN'T STOP ME!!

Our cake topper was the same one my grandparents had on their wedding cake, which made it extra special! If you want to read a little more about ours, The New York Times did a slideshow of unique cake toppers and included ours HERE!

Our wedding party was the bomb.com comprised with our closest friends and siblings!

One of THE most epic entrances of all time

My dress had POCKETS so basically that's all you need to know. My comfort level was SKY HIGH.

My most favorite, "something blue" pinned to the inside of my dress.

It was magical day! I'm so thankful to my parents for giving us a dream wedding. It was obviously one of the best days of our lives! I look back and think wow, I WAS SO SKINNY BACK THEN. Which depresses me. But I also look and think, I am as happy now as I was back then. I am so grateful for all my blessings. Editor's Note: Fear not, this is as sappy as I'll be for the next 7 years.

Thanks for walking down memory lane with me! I hope I didn't bore you too much. And that you learned something new about us. (Maybe about my CIA operative stalking capabilities).

Happy Valentine's Day! We will be partaking in a family dinner, dining on what my people requested-- meatloaf. Sweet.