Before we go any further . . .

Before we go any further, I feel the need to share something with you, dear readers.

When the mister and I began searching for a wedding venue, I came in with a lot of knowledge, and not simply because I am one of those women who have been planning my wedding “my whole life.” The truth is that this is not the first wedding I have planned, not the first ring on my left hand.

I met B when I was a senior in high school. He was in his early twenties, a computer programmer and musician. We met playing for a community summer band, and soon I was head-over-heels in love. We got engaged a little over two years later, before my sophomore year of college.

But a few hours distance and a few years of maturity greatly changed things, and by the time I was a senior in college it was over, and there was someone else in his arms. I learned more about communication and acceptance through that process that I could have imagined, but I also emerged scared to trust, skeptical of romance, and cynical of the whole engagement-wedding “thing.”

When I met the mister a year and a half later, it took a lot of thinking and a huge leap of faith to let myself get into a relationship where I could risk getting hurt again. I couldn’t be happier - and I partially have B to thank, for teaching me not to settle, and for setting me free to find the mister. As Miss Cheese says, the mister is the “first love of the rest of my life.”