Kayla and Justin – August 9, 2021
Colorful Tennessee Vow Renewal
We met freshmen year of college. We both attended the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) – at the time the school had a ratio of 80/20 men to women. Justin was hanging out with a bunch of friends on one of the few female floors in the dorms. Kayla had popped into see what was going on – she noticed Justin and couldn’t stop thinking about the cute guy sitting on the couch that night. A few weeks later, while heavily procrastinating on schoolwork, she logged into this new thing called Facebook and thoroughly searched for him to figure out his name, etc. Some might call this stalking. She sent a friend request and once he accepted, she sent him a message. They eventually started chatting all the time on AOL Instant Messenger (This story is a real tech time capsule) and then eventually meeting up for meals etc.
Justin ended up tutoring her through Chemistry so she passed, not long after they had their first official date – on Valentine’s Day no less.
Kayla invited Justin on a group date to a local restaurant for Valentine’s day. Justin harshly judged Kayla’s request for BBQ sauce to accompany her steak. Kayla harshly judged Justin’s lack of offer to pay for her meal. They went back to the dorm, watched a movie and Justin eventually produced a bouquet of flowers and asked Kayla to become “official”. Give us a break, we were 18 year old babies. 🙂
We have been on many, many dates since but my (Kayla) favorite dates are always sitting at the bar of one of our favorite local places during a really busy week, catching up with each other while eating cheese curds and drinking a beer. (We are from Wisconsin after all!).
Justin proposed marriage to Kayla on an annual sleigh ride with her family many years ago. Truly one of the only times he has completely surprised her.
Kayla proposed the idea of renewing our vows both to honor of our 10 year anniversary, but also to celebrate overcoming a challenging time in our relationship. We are really excited about our future and thought this would be the perfect way to commemorate the occasion.
We celebrated our honeymoon in the Smokies after our wedding 10 years ago. We love the outdoors and when we decided on a vow renewal, it seemed to be the perfect fit to come back for the occasion.
At our wedding, we celebrated our new beginning with all of our favorite people. It was a huge party that we loved, but were always a little sad about how little time we actually got to spend together that day. For our vow renewal, we are looking forward to getting to be together and doing something “just for us”.
On our wedding day it rained ALL day – but the sky cleared up and the sun shone for the exact time of our outdoor ceremony. For two occasionally neurotic over planners – this was a good exercise in trusting that things work out and to just embrace what comes our way, a lesson we have revisited many times in our marriage. It remains one of our favorite parts of our wedding day.
While it’s called a “vow renewal” we aren’t renewing the same vows we made ten years ago – we are writing our own new vows to reflect how we have grown and changed. In so many ways, we aren’t the same people we were 10 years ago, and I think we are both looking forward to pledging our renewed commitment to the people we have become.
We have both gotten into running the last few years and are active in a local running group. We also love hosting friends, neighbors, and family at our home – we built a huge, beautiful outdoor space last year. We are always working on house projects and are generally crafty/handy people. We love our two dogs (Callie and Lola).
In the “before” times, we traveled a lot – some of our favorite trips included New Zealand and Cuba. While traveling, we always have a deck of cards with us so we can play a game of Rummy while waiting for trains, planes, etc. We have kept an ongoing score for years. Justin is currently up by a significant margin and Kayla is bitter about it. We are looking forward to traveling again and are working on plans for a big Alaska trip in 2022.
