It was love at first sight, at least for one of us. The other one of us took about 12 years to fall in love. I’ll let you guess who’s who. Every “love story” has its own timeline, and it’s cool to look back and see how ours turned out.

When we met on the 3rd floor of Alexis Hall at Walsh University as freshman in 2011, there would have been no reason to say the names Jessica Mitchell and Mike Daugherty in the same sentence. Now, it’s pretty hard to talk about one and not the other.

During her time while attending Walsh, Jess spent a lot of her free time well, not at Walsh. She enjoyed visiting Jackie Nolan, Shelby and Joe at Dayton, driving over to visit Jackie Uhlik at John Carroll, and of course going back home to see her two dogs, Scribbles and Doodles.

Now Mike, besides for his frequent visits to Kent his Freshman year, loved being on Walsh’ campus. Campus security might not have loved it as much as he did, but that’s a story for a different time.

Jess had her core group of friends at Walsh, and Mike hung with the baseball team. Their paths crossed occasionally throughout those 4 years, but it wasn’t until senior year that it would really mean something.

Mike invited Jess and her friend Mariah over to 3b for a party. And, as fate would have it, 2 people did fall in love that night. But, those two people weren't Mike and Jessica. You’re welcome Bonnette and Mariah 😊

Jess & Mike would both graduate from Walsh but lead pretty different paths over the next several years. Jess went on to travel nurse to cities such as Seattle & Denver, while also expressing her love for travel with trips to Thailand, Greece, Canada and Vegas.

Mike stayed local, following his passion for copiers and baseball, working for Blue Technologies and the Cleveland Indians.

During that time, Mike & Jess made sure to drop in each others’ Social Media, sliding into each other’s DM’s with random comments and reactions to what they were each doing at the time.

One of those DM’s led to Jess going out to Mittiga's Lakehouse for Labor Day. From there, the rest was history. Soon after that weekend, came Golf dates, browns games, concerts, sushi dates, and finally, 10 years after meeting each other in Alexis Hall, Mike asked Jessica to be his girlfriend in the most romantic way possible….At Kyle Wards house.

This relationship is one that was not necessarily built fast, but it is definitely built to last.

Each and every one of you who is invited to our wedding was hand-picked because of the support you’ve shown us throughout our time of being with each other. We appreciate every single one of you and can’t wait to celebrate at our wedding.

We are so excited for this day to have everyone we love in one place to celebrate our love.

Photos