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Our First Date
Our First Date
Written by Kristin
August 2021
August 2021
We met online (as one does in a pandemic), and after texting for a few weeks, scheduled dinner at Rosso Pizzeria. No pizza was eaten that night, but we ate well, walked around for hours, talked for even more. Along the lookout to the river valley, Graham made the first move, and asked to kiss me while we were admiring the view from a bench above the iconic Walterdale Bridge. And that was even before I convinced him to get ice cream at Yelo'd, too! 🥰
A few days later, he went out of his way to bring me a Remedy chai at work, despite it being the first week of classes at the U of A and my office for the week being a tent in the middle of the quad. Brave of him, considering he didn’t attend the U of A as a student! It had me swooning all the rest of that Week of Welcome. He's been keeping me very well fed and caffeinated ever since. <3
Bowling at Plaza Bowl with the family.
Cheering the Oilers in Game 7 during a road game watch party. Thanks Nicole & Jordon for the invite!
Celebrating our friends' Fraser & Charmaine wedding in Calgary.
The Proposal
The Proposal
Schemed, planned, dictated, and typed by Graham.
After about a year and a bit of dating, I was already certain that I wanted to propose. In early 2024, Kristin and I decided we should go ahead and have a proper vacation, and we decided on Las Vegas as the destination.
In planning our first out of country vacation, Kristin left most of the planning to me, with one exception: she wanted to visit an indie bookstore. How fitting it was that the Writer's Block, an independant book store and artificial bird sanctuary, also happened to be across from the Paradise Wedding Chapel with drive-thru and Elvis packages available from $279.99. A bargain! (They're not paying me for this, I just recognize a good product when I see it.)
After smuggling the Ring across the border and through TSA in a shoe, it stayed thankfully out of sight until The Day. Early in the afternoon, sweaty from walking an unexpected mile because of a mixup with an Uber, we stepped into the Writer's Block.
While Kristin was perusing the shelves, I went looking for an addition to the Ring for my proposal. I intended to find a bookmark, but instead chose one of the adoptable birds in the store: a partridge named Mikaela seemed the perfect companion for the task at hand. I paid for her, and borrowed a Sharpie to write a shoddy, messy, and ultimately barely legible "wIlL YOu mArRy Me?" in the margin of Mikaela's name/Autobirdography tag. With the assistance of a wonderful staff member to take some photos, I found Kris back in the stacks and handed her the partridge with the nervously scrawled query.
Did I ask her at that moment because she was in the romance section, and the setting was perfect? No.
I was too scared to read the section toppers, but thankfully fate had her in the perfect spot for her to answer in the affirmative to a question I was so scared to ask, even know I already knew the answer.
Even with over 10 years as a professional speaker under my belt, nothing could save me from mumbling and fumbling from nerves until she read the question attached to the bird. Ultimately, she said the exact word that anyone asking another to marry them wants to hear:
"Okay!"
Sadly, the Drive-Thru Wedding Chapel was closed. So now we're exchanging vows in our backyard - with you there to celebrate.
(We talked about going back to Vegas to make it official, but America is The Bad Place now, and we like you too much to ask you to fly there for our wedding, Even though we totally could have been married by Fat Elvis and it would have been cool as hell.)
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