Our Story (The Groom)

From the perspective of the Groom (with occasional grammatical edits by the Bride)

Around september they started a regional single adult choir. I hadn't been able to be very active in Church other than the Sunday services so I decided to do it. We sang Gloria, kind of like The Messiah but easier. Then for the October General Conference the choir set up a pot luck dinner after the afternoon session on Sunday and before the rehearsal. At this dinner this cute girl sat next to me and since it was a single adult activity we were wearing name tags. This girls name happened to be Karen. So we talked a little bit then had choir practice and both left promptly after. Then the next week after rehearsal we had refreshments and my friend that I gave a ride was talking to someone so I was standing around waiting. Then I saw Karen just standing there alone with no one to talk to. So I ended up talking to her for 45 minutes before getting dragged away by my friend who was now ready to leave. The sad part being I still didn't have her phone number. On my way home I realized how stupid I was and decided to use the choir roster look her up on Facebook (yes I know thats kinda creepy but it worked). So we talked till the wee hours of the morning. For some reason I still hadn't asked her on a date, but I was planning something. 
She invited me to a dance type church event that happened to be formal if you want it to be and some how convinced me to wear my blues (don't ask me how that worked). So the next Sunday after rehearsal I asked her out for that Friday to have a picnic and ride bikes around the National Mall. We both went home and then got online and chatted some. Karen decided she couldn't wait till Friday so she invited me over to her place to watch a movie that Tuesday. So I went over and we watched Kate and Leopold (thanks to a friend I had already seen it but she hadn't). So we watched the movie and talked till it was pretty late. Then again she couldn't wait to see me. She wanted to do something the next day. I was tired and had to work the next day and so I told her if she was willing to drive into DC I would spend as much time as she wanted. So she came and we went to Subway and got dinner. Then we walked to the Capitol building and talked as we stared at the Washington Monument. Finally we got to our first date (sorta kinda, well the date that was planned first.) We had some pretty lame deli sandwiches( I was in charge of bringing the food). Then we rode our bikes around to the Washington Monument WWII Korean and Veitnam memorials. We also made it the USMC war memorial. After that we never spent more than 2 days apart until in December when she went back home to Utah.  
The following years we visited each other as much as we could and used Skype, texting, and calling to fill in the time when we weren't together. After proposing so many times I lost count I finally got her to say yes last June and we set our date for when I get home from Afghanistan. 

Our Story (The Bride)

From the Point of View of the Bride

In August of 2008, my stake decided to put on The Savior of the World and I also heard about a regional single adult Institute choir singing Gloria. I really like singing, so I decided to go, even though it meant I’d be really busy come December. But, this was August and December was a ways away, so I decided to give it a go. On the first Sunday in October, the choir decided to hold a potluck after the Sunday afternoon session of conference. I’d watched the morning session at the stake center in Centreville and the afternoon session with a friend’s family. They invited me to stay for dinner, but I wanted to go to the dinner. So another friend and I went to the dinner. We got there close to on time, so there weren’t many people there. To make my roommate and best friend proud, I decided to sit down next to a boy instead of one seat over, which would have been my normal tendency. We kind of talked on and off through the dinner and then I went home and didn’t think much of it.

The next week at practice I was exhausted and was sitting on a pew resting and waiting for my friends to finish talking so we could go home when I saw Dave standing by the refreshment table. He was nice the week before, so I walked past him to see if he’d talk to me. We ended up talking for an hour or so, me forgetting my tiredness, until one of his buddies forced him to go. I kind of thought he was interested, but he didn’t ask for my phone number or anything, so I was confused and started to think he probably wasn’t. That night though, he friended me on Facebook and I used Facebook to get him to go to a single adult activity on Saturday.

The activity was a mini-Oscar night where all the wards had submitted short films and we watched them and there was a dance afterwards. Because it was a formal activity, he volunteered to wear his dress blues. (I thought he looked really good) but, he didn’t hug me or ask for my number again. He’d spent the whole night with me, but I chalked it up to me being really the only person he knew there.

The next day at choir we talked after choir again, but still no request for a number or anything, which was really odd because he asked me out for a date on Friday. Monday, using Facebook chat, we joked about me taking him on a date, and he finally got my address on Facebook, and then actually got my number (after my address, which I find really funny). Tuesday he came over and we watched Kate&Leopold, Wednesday I went into the city for dinner with him, and Friday we had our (first) date biking around the national mall. It kind of snowballed from there, with us spending as much time as we possibly could together. We managed to visit each other every couple of months and used Skype and texting and calling as frequently as possible to keep in touch.