If You Ask the Groom:

Em & I met in high school, I’ll never forget the first time we really hung out together. I got invited to a “school’s out” party at Em’s house. Calling it a party is a bit of a stretch, there were only 5-6 of us, but I remember having such a great time and really enjoying it. After the party, Em & I started hanging out throughout the summer. I’d go to work during the day and go to Em’s house to hangout in the evenings. We had a fun little group put together and we’d all go places and do fun things. I started falling in love with Em that summer. I thought it was overly apparent, but boy was I wrong. She’ll tell you that she had NO idea I was in love with her (which I still think is a bit of a fib, but I’ll let her have that one). Isaiah, my now best man, kept telling me I had to “make a move” or do something to show Em I liked her. So, I did what any high school boy would do. I just leaned in and kissed her. That did not turn out well for me. Long story short, she didn’t feel the same way and we both went our separate ways for the rest of the school year.

Fast forward to college. In my sophomore year of college, I started interning for the Air Force football team. I’d hangout on the sidelines and help coordinate all the stuff in between game action. To my surprise, I ran into Allie (Em’s twin sister) at one of the early season games I was working. She was cheering for Air Force, so we caught up and chatted for a while, and then would always say hi when we saw each other at games. A month or two went by, and Air Force had a big game scheduled (I think it was against Army). I was walking up into the stands to grab someone for our next promotion, and low and behold I see Em sitting in the stands a couple sections away from me. I honestly didn’t think it was her for a while until I asked Allie if she had brought Em to the game to which she replied, “oh yeah, she comes all the time”. I saw her a few more times, but never worked up the courage to go say hi or anything to her. I would text her from time to time to check in, see how she was doing, but she was always dating someone or focusing on school or back in Texas with her dad. It just never really worked out.

That is until one day, I was scrolling through social media and saw a post from Em. The post said something about how she needed an internship focusing on apparel & merchandising so she could graduate on time. Well, it just so happened that by this time, I had started working for the minor league baseball team down in the Springs where I was the team’s ticketing & merchandise manager. The bell in my head went off, and I told her that I had an internship for her if she was willing to hike down to the Springs for it. She took it, my plan worked.

On her first day, I remember going through inventory (which is the most tedious and unfulfilling task I think I’ve ever performed) and asking her about her life. Where she’d been, what she’d been up to, all that kind of stuff. The first sentence out of her mouth was, “this job really worked out for me because my boyfriend lives down here and goes to the Academy, so it was so convenient that I got to move down here and be closer to him!”

I cannot emphasize enough how hard it was to contain my eye roll after that one.

From that day on, I promised myself that she would just be my employee and my friend, nothing more. The season kicked off, and we were about a month through when one of our coworkers had a birthday party that we all got invited to. The night was fun, we went out to some of the bars in downtown Colorado Springs. I was just doing my thing, having a good time, when all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. Em had just dumped her boyfriend. Right in the middle of the bar, with no warning or anything (according to the disgruntled party, aka Air Force boy). The party died pretty fast after that – we all went home, and that was pretty much that (at least I thought).

One night, Em pops into my office after a game. Before I could say anything, she sits down across from me and says, “let’s just kiss”. We kissed. This was in June of 2021, and we’ve been together ever since. We got a dog, moved in together, got engaged, and the rest is history.

If You Ask the Bride:

Our friendship began ten years ago, though I can’t quite remember how I met Aaron. It feels like I’ve always known him, at least since I was fifteen. We became fast friends our sophomore summer. Spending the warm nights laughing, sharing inside jokes, and going on adventures. After that summer, we drifted apart for reasons I can’t recall.

Fast forward to the end of my senior year when I was searching for an internship to complete my Bachelor’s in Apparel and Merchandising at Colorado State. Aaron reached out with a job application, and with a little help from the universe, I got the job. We quickly reconnected, and I realized the slightly dorky, nervous boy I knew in high school had grown into an incredible man. He had gotten much taller, more handsome and quite the charmer. We grew closer that summer, though we made sure not to cross professional boundaries since Aaron was my boss.

But one evening, while out with colleagues, everything changed. Seeing Aaron with his arm around another girl in a bar made me realize I was in love with him. I immediately broke up with the boyfriend I had brought with me that night and left. The next day, I marched into Aaron’s office and said, “Let’s just kiss.” At first, he said no, but he quickly came to his senses. I quickly quit my job, and within six months we had bought a dog and moved in together. Starting our forever.

Our Story:

Somewhere in-between