A Trip Down Memory Lane...The First Meeting

Our first anniversary is coming up and I'd like to chronicle the events that led up to our marriage. Starting today with the engagement story, written (in 3rd person) by Justin.

On March 30th, 2007, Kacy and Justin were attending a concert for a mutual friend. Kacy was there with some of her friends while Justin was flying solo. Waiting to go into the auditorium, Justin recalls seeing Kacy and admiring her hair. That is strange for two reasons: 1) He is a guy; 2) He does not have much hair. Still waiting to be seated, there was repeated eye contact between the two of them, though Kacy doesn't recall this part of the evening. Once the doors opened, Justin made his way towards the back of the auditorium and found a seat, all the while trying to find out where this girl with beautiful hair went. It just so happened that Kacy (and her friends) came and sat two rows in front of Justin. While reserving a number of seats for her friends, Kacy was still waiting for one of them to come and watching for him at the back door. As the Lord would have it, Justin was directly in her line of sight for the door when she turned to look for her friend. After multiple looks toward said door, preceded by some awkward eye contact, Justin is thinking to himself, "Do I know this girl?" "Why is this incredibly beautiful girl looking at me?" Kacy on the other hand is thinking, "Why is this boy looking at me?" "Why do I keep making awkward eye contact with him?" After the concert was over, Justin drove back to Houston without talking to Kacy and without figuring out why they kept looking at each other. Justin was too nervous and shy to go talk to her because his only pickup line was going to be, "Hi, I'm Justin, the guy who you kept making awkward eye contact with."

But the story does not end there, friends. Justin decided to use Facebook (...if you're not familiar just ask the nearest teenager) to see if he could find her. While this can be referred to as "Facebook stalking", Justin likes to think he was just using his tech-savvy skills to find the girl with beautiful hair. The stalking was successful, and a "friend request" was sent to Kacy from Justin with the following message, "Hi, my name is Justin. I didn't get a chance to meet you tonight because I had to drive back to Houston, but I just wanted you to know that you have a beautiful smile. I hope its okay to tell you that." Justin thought that talking about her smile might have a better shot than if he started off talking about how beautiful her hair was.

That began their Facebook message dialogue. After numerous messages and questions from Justin about where she was from, what a "2-1-1 Information and Referral Specialist" does, and her love for cutting out coupons, Kacy started to open up more and more and finally asked him a few questions. 4 days and 39 messages later, the "meet for coffee" invitation was thrown out there - which would be their first official meeting of each other. They met at Sweet Eugene's for coffee at 9:30 p.m. and stayed there talking and laughing until they closed at 2:00 a.m. They continued to meet about once a week while still talking and messaging each other for about a month. Justin knew he liked her; but Kacy still wasn't sure she liked him. However, while Kacy was frantically trying to get everything in order for her study abroad trip to Switzerland, Justin won her over...

She was leaving in a week and her passport had not come in the mail yet, in addition to misplacing her plane ticket. Justin offered to help - which included waking up at 5:00 a.m. to call the passport office to make an appointment. After numerous calls, he finally got through and made an appointment to come to the Houston office. Justin offered to take her. This was a fun day for him; not so much for her. In both of their minds this is how the day was going to go: leave College Station around 8:00 a.m., get the passport and be back up in College Station around lunch time. However, Kacy and Justin quickly found out that the "appointment" that they woke up early and spent hours upon hours trying to make meant absolutely NOTHING. When they stepped off the elevator and saw the enormous number of people waiting in line they still thought, "Good thing we made that appointment!!!" Oh, the bliss of pure ignorance.

For the next 7 hours they stood and sat in line waiting. And waited some more. And then after a little more waiting, at about 2:00 p.m. Justin started getting nervous because he had to be in Austin for his cousin's rehearsal dinner that evening and they still had about 40 people in front of them before they would even get to speak to someone about the passport. While they were sitting in the chairs (...a welcome break from having to stand or sit on the floor), Kacy was losing hope and leaned over and put her head in her hands. Justin gently rubbed her back and said, "Everything is going to be alright. You're going to get your passport and you'll find that ticket. You're not going to miss this trip!" The end of the story is that Justin had to leave shortly after that and Kacy's friend (and honorary bridesmaid) Kristy came and brought her back to College Station. Kacy likes to remind Justin that he left her all alone in that passport office. Justin pleads with her to remember all the nice things he did for her during that small crisis :+)

So that is how we met and started to get to know each other. Kacy spent most of May in Switzerland on her study abroad trip; Justin spent the end of June in Greece on a mission trip. But somehow in all of the traveling and living in different cities, they began to "date" and the Lord grew their relationship. Thanks for reading all the way down here!