Chris & Angelina

Our beginning, according to Angelina:

Chris and I met at a restaurant that we both worked at. When I first saw him I thought he was hot stuff, but so did every other girl! So we were just friends. Even when I moved to California for six months, we still kept in touch. When I decided to move back to TN, I was in a man hater stage and really wasn’t looking to fall in love ever! Chris and I reconnected after I had sent him a happy birthday text. He invited me to come to a bar with other people we used to work with to celebrate. We had a great time catching up and the next week he invited me to Live on the Green. Live on the Green is one of our favorite things about Nashville. Free outside concerts! I really got to know Chris better. We talked about God, music, Harry Potter, and of course food! I loved how Chris was always himself, he never put on a front. This allowed me to really be myself, which I usually had a hard time doing. Yup the weirdness was out! We ended up going to concerts every week and the rest was history . I am so excited to marry my best friend. Mater from Cars:” I knowed it, I knowed I made a good choice. Lightining McQueen: In what? Mater: My best friend.”

Our beginning, according to Chris:

I wanted to stay in Chicago with all my heart, but because of this and that I had to come back home to Tennessee. Yet after four years in Chicago, Tennessee didn’t feel like home anymore. After working a couple weird jobs (like night-shift at Mapco), Zachary set me up with an interview at the restaurant he was working at, Macaroni Grill. As I’m sitting alone in the bar area waiting for the manager, this beautiful girl walks by, hurrying but smiling. I got the job and got to meet this girl in person, but before that, after my interview, I approached Zachary and asked who that girl with the pony tail was. He replied, “Who Justin?” Referring to a guy with long hair in a ponytail working there. I said no and probably shook my head or called him an idiot. No, the girl I saw was her, and even if I didn't know it, she was the home I was looking for. Over the next year or two I went through some rough patches, but every now and then I’d get a text or call from that beautiful girl, the one different from all the other girls we worked with or that I had met since. I remember sitting in the bathroom at some pool and listening to a hilarious rendition of “Happy Birthday” on my voicemail from someone a thousand miles away. She finally came back to Tennessee though, and by then I had cleaned up my act and cleared my head enough to see just how great this girl was. She came to a birthday party for a mutual friend and myself and we picked up where we left off like she had never left. On an impulse I invited her to go to Live on the Green, a free weekly concert starting the next week and she said yes. She didn’t know it at the time, but I was nervous as heck. In my mind, this was a casual date that was riding the border between friendship and romance. So, on the way to her house I tried to clean up my car and even bought air fresheners to cover up the smell of smoke (not knowing she couldn’t smell…). I picked her up and was so unexplainably giddy she had to point out more than once that I was driving 20 miles under the speed limit and going the wrong way. We did finally get there though, and the place was crowded. She wanted to get as close to the stage as we could, so as we started slithering through the jumble of people I reached back and grabbed her hand. When we finally found a spot I didn’t let go. Every week we went to Live on the Green and I think she started to realize that these were more than just two friends hanging out. She won’t admit she made the first move, but during one of our favorite bands, she turned back from the stage and kissed me; I just held her in my arms. In an alarmingly and irrationally quick amount of time I found myself thinking and almost saying, “I Love You, I Love You” which scared me and electrified me simultaneously. About four months later, when I was going through a dark time, she told me she loved me for the first time and a flood-gate of pent up emotion released inside of me.

You’ll have to excuse the longwinded story--the writer in me wants to add as much detail as possible, plus I am reveling in the nostalgia of reliving these moments in our relationship. Of course, over the last two and a half years there have been fights and doubts and struggles to compromise and meld together two very different identities. I may write it all down for my own pleasure, but you’re probably only interested in the cliff notes: like how I accidently connected Her to an email to my boss in which, at the bottom, I added a post-script mentioning I planned to propose to my girlfriend this summer--she replied that she especially liked the p.s.; or how--through a series of miscommunications--the Palumbos were under the impression I was planning on giving her a used ring from Walmart to propose with; or how, as I knelt down to one knee on our private balcony in Mexico, surrounded by a ridiculous amount of rose petals and two geese made of towels, I felt my stomach drop through the floor--taking all the words I had planned to say with it. I had memorized a special Bible verse for the proposal and I couldn't even remember the first word. I stuttered out, “Angelina Palumbo, I love you. Will you marry me?” and despite all my mistakes, she said, “Hell yes!”

Later, I was able to compose myself enough to get across the words and sentiments I had planned for my proposal, but I think the most important part was the verses from Ruth (whose story is one you should read if you haven’t already). Ruth said, “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there be buried. May the Lord smite me if even death separates you from me.” R1:16-17