Get to Know Us: Our Story

I "wrote" the next installment of Our Story for our wedding blog this past weekend. (I'm actually editing - combining entries from my handwritten journal, email exchanges, and Tweets.) When we got engaged I put together a timeline of events. It's not complete. There's actually a gap in the timeline. A gap that I didn't realize until today. We've always talked about a standing weekly Wednesday dinner date and I'd always thought it began immediately - that we starting having dinner every week after that first dinner. But it didn't happen that way. Yes we eventually met for dinner every week (the night of the week actually alternated between Wednesday and Thursday and it wasn't always a given). You'll have to wait for details, just like I'm making myself wait.

When I first wrote the outline for Our Story and the first couple of chapters, I read it to cubes and we both laughed. It was true to my cheesy nature. Now that I just finished the fifth chapter, I've discovered that the process of writing goes beyond just putting words to paper figuratively speaking. (The first draft of my vows actually sprung into my head one day while I was working on the second installment of Our Story.) I can still feel the butterflies in my stomach when I think about how nervous I was the entire day of our first dinner. I can still remember the anxiety waiting for the next dinner date and wondering whether it was just a dinner with a friend or the beginning of a deeper relationship.

I'm very thankful that both of us chronicled our story via Twitter and Facebook, and that we were public about it. Even though I know where Our Story is today, reliving those early months is amazing.

What started out being cheesy has become more. I'm no longer writing the chapters of Our Story in advance as I'm enjoying the discovery process. As I re-read the emails and Twitters, I still can't believe this is our story - a love story. I also find the reality of the story better than the version we retell (like the standing weekly dates didn't begin immediately as we "remember").

Are you sharing your story with friends and family? Are you relying on memory or are you looking back to emails, Twitters, or a written journal?