How We Met

Lately, the thing people want to know most is how we got engaged (and/or why we moved to Florida), but the second-most-asked question is, “How did you meet?” And while the easiest (read: most boring) answer is, “Tinder,” the truth is a bit more convoluted.

Let me set the scene for you:

The year is 2017 and I had *just* downloaded a dating app to distract myself from a breakup when I swiped right on a handsome British journalist. His profile was pretty sparse, but I knew he had recently moved to California from Hong Kong, he was into space, and he wasn’t smiling in any of his photos. Despite my irrational fear that he had an Austin-Powers-esque grill, I agreed to meet him at a cute natural wine bar in Oakland.

My Uber dropped me off across the street, so with my heart in my throat, I made eye contact with the brunette sitting outside, hoping he was my date, as I waited for the crosswalk to count down. He recognized me, smiled with all his beautiful teeth, and we decided to turn the first meeting into a full-on bar crawl. We had one drink at each bar/restaurant on Grand Avenue until we discovered The Alley, a grungy, quirky piano bar with business cards literally covering all the walls that I’d somehow never discovered before that night. The bar crawl ended there because it instantly became my favorite bar in Oakland and we stayed until they kicked us out.

Needless to say, we had the best first date ever, but since this was the first person I’d even gone out with after a breakup, I was skeptical. I agreed to a second date, but my brain was already spinning. In the past I jumped into relationships too quickly and too often, so I felt like I couldn’t possibly date the first guy I matched with just out of principle. Plenty of fish in the sea, and all that crap. So I explained via text that I’d prefer to just be friends, and he graciously agreed.*

We lost touch after a few months and I went on to play the field. He did the same, and even though we only lived a mile away from each other and had a lot of hobbies and even a few friends in common, somehow we never accidentally crossed paths.

Finally after almost a year of bad dates, repeatedly deleting the apps, and declaring to my roommates that love was definitively deceased, I found myself back at The Alley, this time with one of my best friends, Devyn.

We had just imbibed in $5 all-you-can-drink sake, and I was feeling bold so I slurred, “THIS is the bar I was at the last time I had a good date. I’VE ONLY HAVE ONE GOOD DATE IN A YEAR.” 
“Ok, so what did you do to f*ck it up?” she asked, also sassy from obscene amounts of sake.**
“Idk, I just thought it was too soon..?”
“We’re texting him.”
“Noooo what would I even say?!”

So we devised a plan. We took a photo of the inside of the bar that we knew would be recognizable and drafted a text together. Something along the lines of, “I’m at The Alley! Thinking of you. How have you been?”

Smooth, right? But it worked.

Thank the good lord, he wrote back very quickly and asked if I was free to hang out that Friday. I was, and we ended up at The Alley again, except this time when we left we didn’t spend a moment apart for 15 months and then he asked me to be his wife.

*A little advice for my single ladies: if you want to know what a guy is really like, tell him you just want to be friends after an amazing date. It’s telling. 
**Sending a MASSIVE thank you to Devyn for calling me out on my shit and for not letting me miss this opportunity just because rejection is scary. I like to think Jason and I would have found each other again no matter what, but I’m so grateful that the timing was literally perfect for both of us on that fateful night. Even though I hate knowing that we could have spent that first year together and didn’t, I hate the thought that I could’ve messed it up because of poor timing even more. Love works in mysterious ways, my friends.