Once Upon A Time... Our Love Story

After years of kissing all the wrong frogs I have finally found my prince. We met in April, and married in October. Before you finish the "aww" or the "what the..." let me explain.

The Aussie and I met online. We exchanged winks, a few emails and quickly progressed to text messages and Skype dates. It wasn't long before I had agreed to meet him face to face. Him being the only person I actually agreed to meet in person, you can imagine my hesitation. I had him meet me at a local restaurant about ten minutes from where I live and didn't feel the least bit bad about him driving the hour and half to get there. So with my mother on speed dial, and friends ready to pounce at a moments notice, I showed up for dinner, 20 minutes late with a "happy belated birthday" card in hand.

I had hoped that my attempt to be cute and my recognition of his recently passed birthday would excuse my tardiness. There he stood, six feet of Aussie, with his round honey eyes, dark blond hair with just a hint of auburn peeking through sporting a five o'clock shadow. He wore sneakers- strike one- but i was willing to overlook that because of his adorable awkward greeting.
We took our seats and I wondered if everyone around us could tell it was our first date, our first meeting. While much of the dinner was a blur I can assure you it had its fair share of the standard fist date interview questions. Though we had already discussed much of them repeating them in person seemed just as new, just as traditional as any other first date. I remember ordering a burger out of a combination of hunger, nerves and not wanting to appear high maintenance. He started a story with " there's this burger place in Wisconsin, have you ever been there?" "No" "Good, don't ever go, its terrible" I laughed, appreciated his honesty and humor and took a bite of my burger, wondering if this would be the start of a new adventure or just a funny story to tell my friends about later.

Fast forward to late September. My traveling boyfriend shows up to my place after he was on the road for a week, I scoop him into my arms ready for an exciting night and hear the dreaded words that no girl wants to hear... "we need to talk" and as my stomach danced the salsa with two left feet I released him from my grip, looked into his eyes and said "what did you do?!? I will kill you!" his warm nervous smile calmed me down momentarily while he sat me down on the couch to let me know that his Visa had been denied and he would officially be illegal in six days. "It's fine, we'll get married" I say "I'm glad you feel that way, let me tell you all of the options" he replies. the rest of the conversations as I recall it sounded much like the mother in Charlie Brown. I mean who had time to listen, I was busy planning a wedding! "my Aunt is a JP" I offered, with not a clue what he was talking about it.

So I made the appropriate phone calls - parents, aunt, cousins, grandparents and announced that the Aussie and I would be married before the week was over. I called out of work, drove the two and a half hours to my parents house with my future husband and looked at sites to have our wedding.

With time as our enemy- my parents, my Aussie, my brother and I drove around spots to figure out where to marry. It was decided that we would still do our church wedding at some point in the future; complete with a big white dress and a cake, reception and every little girls dream. We decided to wed on the beach of one of our favorite picnic spots and do a simple dinner for the family only ceremony.

The big day was here... I had the dress, a simple white gown my grandfather bought me years before, as I'm his real life Evening Gown Barbie. I had the birdcage style headpiece my mother found at a vintage store, I had the sand from the beach of my childhood that my mother, maid or honor and I scooped up the morning of and put in a small jar for our sand ceremony. I had met the in laws when they flew over the day before I married their son, and I had beautifully simple isle made of flowers and buckets looking over the ocean. Skype was set up for the family members that couldn't join us,  and now the only thing missing was my Aussie...

How cute would it be to have a beach wedding on the beach where we spent most of time! To complete that, how cute would it be to have a sand ceremony on the beach. We would use sand from my childhood beach and sand from his beach in Sydney.

After my poor father in law to be was given a hard time going through customs, he finally arrived in the States with the sand we NEEDED. In the crazy morning that was our wedding day, my future in laws and future husband forgot... yes FORGOT the sand.

As the isle my mum and maid of honor made me got shorter and shorter with the tide coming in, and as my father and I drove around for what seemed like an eternity, my brother, on an empty tank of gas put my father in law, brother in law, mother in law, and husband into his car to drive to the other side of the Cape to pick up the sand stopping for $2.00 worth of gas on the way.

Yes, they all said "lets just get sand from right here, she'll never know" but my wonderful Aussie wasn't willing to start our lives on a lie. ( I really am lucky)

The ceremony was beautiful, my aunt was the JP and on a cold October day on the Cape, surrounded by 30 family members we exchanged vows and I even had my aunt end the ceremony with "May the Force be with you" just for him.

We're currently in the process of planning our church wedding with a full reception. We have yet to have our first dance, or a wedding cake. But we'll get there... as long as life doesn't get in the way!

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