After I shared our Save the Date video a few months ago a lot of you asked for more deets on how my husband and I met, and it reminds me just how freaking crazy life is. The fact that we grew up down the street from one another. Didn’t start dating till a decade or two later. Got engaged where we had our second date. Got married where we got engaged. And then, had two babies. At once.
Since a few of you wanted the scoop, here it is! It’s so fun to share!
So yeah, we grew up one street away from one another. We were in a couple elementary school classes together, and if I dug further, perhaps some in middle school. We never crushed, flirted or dated. Ever. We ended up at different high schools, and our paths split. We’d see each other every now and then at neighborhood gatherings or mutual friend’s parties, but I mean we’d go years without running into one another.
Fast forward to college. He went to USCD while I went to University of Colorado at Boulder. He stayed in San Diego, and I jet further, to NYC for a few years.
Lots of time has now passed.
It’s now 2010. I’ve moved back to Cali and lived in LA for a bit, but I go down one weekend to see friends in San Diego. I run into Hunter, we actually sat next to each other at a going away dinner for a mutual friend. He was so sweet. Offered me corn dog poppers (Firehouse anyone?), and just was so kind in asking about me, my time in NYC, life. I remember he said “it sounds like you really liked it…why don’t you go back?” I felt like he really knew my heart. Because at the time I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be home in Cali yet, or if I had left the Big Apple too soon.
The next day a girlfriend joked to me, “you and Hunter would make really cute babies.” I said what?? I’ve known him forever that is so weird. And I really felt that. Like no, he’s a childhood friend. Couldn’t even go there.
But then days later I found myself thinking about him. How handsome he had become and again, just how kind he was. And I kept replaying him buying us champagne that night at the bar in his true surfer dude form, wearing his jeans tee and Ugg moccasins. I basically developed a crush on him but since we were far away, I felt like running into each other again was just not going to happen. And there was really no way to cross paths again soon unless I basically knocked on his door like a creeper.
But all in time.
I forget how he got my number, but he texted me 3 months later. “Are you going to be around in LA for Ashley’s birthday party?” You better believe it. I was with my friends when I got the text and I kept saying “I’ll be around. I’ll be arounnnnd.” So excited to perhaps run into him again.
The party came and the rest was history.
For the next year we spent every single weekend except one with each other. I’d train down to his paradise in San Diego. Then he’d train up to my world in LaLa the next weekend. Sometimes we would meet in the middle.
He ended up moving up to LA a year in. We got engaged a year after that. Married (wedding pics/vid here), and then voila. Buns.
So that’s the story, in a nutshell. These pics were our engagement pictures all taken at Union Train Station. They resemble so much of our life back and forth from beach to city, and I can’t wait to share with my kids someday. It’s still so crazy to me that we grew up next door but it took a few diff schools, jetting across towns and countries doing our own thing, to circle back and find one another forever.
But life is funny. And by now I should know that.
