Cocktail reception immediately following
at the home of Mrs. Carmen Classy
7029 Symphony Lane, San Antonio, Texas
We think San Antonio is a wonderful city, full of some of the most rich history in Texas (and the rest of the U.S. for that matter.) Walking around downtown, soaking in the sounds of everything happening on the River Walk, and experiencing a good, old-fashioned Texas fiesta all await you.
If these accommodations are too pedestrain for your discriminating tastes, try the Omni La Mansion del Rio, Hilton Palacio del Rio, or The Westin Riverwalk. They all offer luxurious rooms, beautiful views, and easy access to the River Walk.
So we kept emailing for a little over a month. Then on April Fool's Day he called. I was on the other line and on my way out the door, but with panicked hand motions and a quick goodbye to my other friend, I answered the phone very coolly:
"Hello?"After a brief chat, I told him I'd call him back the next day. That first long conversation we talked for an hour without blinking.
"Can I speak to Mandy?" asked the new voice.
"This is she."
"Hi..." he responded with a confidence that put me at ease.
Phone conversations over the next month increased in regularity and length. By mid-April we were talking at least 2-3 times a week for two hours or more. We texted when we weren't on the phone and emailed at work. I liked Joshua, and I was pretty sure he liked me. But I knew things couldn't go much further until we met. Then the opportunity presented itself: My sister, brother-in-law, and I had a wedding to go to in Nashville in early May, and it wouldn't be too strange to ask Joshua to meet us.
After some logistical maneuvering, he was able to come. I had never met anyone I was such good friends with who I had never met in real life, but despite this strangeness, I wasn't completely freaked out. We talked on the phone almost every day until the wedding when he arrived from Chattanooga, and even when we met in person, we were still talking to each other on the phone. I came down the stairs into the hotel lobby that Saturday and saw him for the first time. He was smaller than I'd imagined, and he looked almost nothing like any of his pictures (he was much less bearded). He gave me a somewhat awkward bigHug, and we went back upstairs to have breakfast with the rest of my group.
The wedding provided the most romantic first date anyone could hope for: the reception was held at Cheekwood Mansion, a historic home in Nashville filled with art and surrounded by a tiered botanical garden that looked like Pemberley from Pride and Prejudice. We spent the first hour there together wandering the moonlit grounds and finding out our first impressions of each other.
By the end of that first weekend, after the shopping and bookstore browsing, Japanese food eating, costumed photo shoot (see Flickr), and Joshua getting jealous of Mat Kearney hitting on me we decided we wanted to be together. And not just your normal internet-friends-wanting-to-date scenario (whatever that is); the morning Joshua took my sister, brother-in-law, and I to the airport I told him he was everything I had ever wanted, and he declared that he felt as if he had found his right arm. After I got home to Texas, he started looking for jobs in Dallas and shopping for rings.
I went to visit him in Chattanooga in June and met his family, and he came later that month to Texas to meet mine. At the end of July, he had relocated his entire life to Dallas and was living with my parents while searching for a job. This was the perfect opportunity for my loving and protective parents to get to know the man of my dreams and begin to love him as a son. After about a month, he got a contract job and moved closer to me.
The autumn was occasionally a difficult time, attending a young marrieds group at church as the only un-at-least-engaged couple, we sought to prepare our hearts for this bigHuge decision we were both very ready to make. Taking the class was a fantastic idea, but I was a very impatient woman. August, then September, then October, November, December, and January went by with no proposal. And each time another month or so passed, I had some kind of meltdown. But finally on February 3, Joshua asked me to marry him.
Having done a bit of wedding pre-planning in anticipation of a short engagement, we drove to San Antonio to see the church where we wanted to get married and where my parents had married thirty-six years ago. We walked the grounds and imagined the look of the ceremony, talked about the significance of the place for me and my family. In the chapel to the side of the sanctuary, I was looking at a historic window, and Joshua leaned over to get something out of the camera bag. When I looked back at him, he was on one knee and grabbed my left hand to take off my glove. I squealed in delight and watched as he told how happy I made him and how he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Then he asked if I would please marry him. It was such a beautiful moment, I just stood there memorizing everything and looking into his face. Finally Joshua reminded me that I had to say something, to which I replied that YES I would marry him. I love him.
God has answered every prayer I ever prayed about the man I would marry in Joshua. And that is no exaggeration. He has been so faithful. We are so excited about our life together and blessed at how every step has played out. Thank you for being a part of our story.
"It's sort of odd that this thought never occurred to me until very recently, especially considering my general state of life and time-spending and environments and occupation and such, but be that as it may: I have a higher than average predisposition to meeting my wife via the internet."I wrote that one time on my blog. That time specifically being the day after Valentine's - February 15, 2006. For those of you keeping score, that was 8 days before I talked to Mandy for the first time. How serendipitous, and a clear sign that I can not only predict the future with some degree of accuracy, but can also will it in to being via internet self-publishing.
I don't remember anything specific about that day. I don't remember the weather, or what I had on, or how late I was to the office. Clouds did not part to reveal divine sun-drenched instructions, Care Bears did not valet my vehicle upon arrival at work, and birds most certainly did not suddenly appear. What I do remember is that somewhere in the midst of my daily web-browsing routine, I stumbled across one Mandy Lewis on MySpace (of all places.)
You see, I knew Anthony. Well, I knew Anthony through the internet. (I know him in 3-D now and he remains awesome, though obviously slightly more touchable now, considering we inhabit the same neighborhood.) We'd been carrying on an internet friendship for close to three years based mostly on shared love of humor, web-nerdery, sarcasm, and all things wonderful. Little did I know how one (of many) dotcomrades would be the degree of separation between me and my future.
Me: "So, this Mandy Lewis person is your sister-in-law?"
Anthony: "Go, go! Act now! Supplies are limited!"
Anthony was obviously a big fan of the idea.
And thus it began. I broke typical internet protocol (for myself at least) and contacted an almost-stranger (woman!) through MySpace, simply because she seemed interesting (read: absurdly cute), and because it just seemed like a terribly good idea that particular day. And wonder of wonders, she wrote back. And she was absurdly interesting.
We quickly moved from MySpace mail to "real" email (because I absolutely despise that website.) We talked art, we talked academia, we talked faith and theology, we talked family. I sent her photos of huge waves because she mentioned having an affinity for surfing. I started looking very forward to these little breaks from the reality of my surroundings, which had quickly grown a bit lonely and stale in Chattanooga, TN. She slipped her phone number slyly into the end of an email. I went for a walk downtown. I took my phone. I called. She answered, playing it calm, cool, and collected, which is humorous in retrospect, because she was actually freaking out. Girls are funny like that.
What followed was a subtle process that I now recognize as falling in love. Our phone conversations increased in length and frequency. I had all these questions I wanted to ask her; I loved getting to know her. It didn't take more than a few weeks for this stranger to become my favorite person to talk to.
A few days before we met in person, Mandy arrived in Nashville and we phone conversated - me in Chattanooga, frantically trying to figure out the logistics of getting to Nashville w/ no functional car, no tux, and no money and she, frantically trying to calm her heart because she had never dated anyone and was hours away from meeting me for the first time. As she sat in her hotel room I asked (demanded?) that she jump up and down on her hotel bed because, "Mandy, that's just what you do first thing when you get into a hotel room." She complied. I was pretty much done for by that point anyway.
I did what any single, intelligent chap would do - I rented a car and bought a tux and drove to Nashville on the day of the wedding. In God's infinite goodness and wonderful sense of beauty, the first time I saw Mandy she was delicately descending a spiral staircase, in a massive hotel lobby flooded with the most exquisite Nashville morning light. I'm fairly sure this is the way that two artists should see each other for the first time.
She was beautiful. I wanted to fastforward a few months. I wanted the awkwardness and the getting to know each other's mannerisms and the growing comfortable with each other and all the everything else to be done with so we could get on with our lives together. (I didn't really want that, because it was another part of falling in love, but I KNEW that she was it and that we were going to get married and, being the rather motivated, quick-processing, let's-do-something-RIGHT-NOW kind of guy I am, I wanted to get this show on the road.)
And just like that, we were together. We've talked everyday since then. I moved to Dallas, a city in a state I previously referred to simply as "flat, brown, and ugly." (Words I have eaten many times over by this point; Texas is charming.) I got a job with a commute because I wanted to be finacially prepared to be married. I got to know her wonderful family. I faced the gauntlet of overly-protective Hispanic Aunts and parents distrusting of "that boy from the internet." I bought a very large, shiny piece of jewelry. I gave it to her. She smiled.
God has been faithful to go with and before us at every step of the way, preparing the way and placing His stamp of approval on our relationship. Waiting (impatiently) for Mandy has been the biggest blessing of my life. So many years of prayers for a partner to walk through life with have been answered in her. She is more than I asked for or imagined (and I have a pretty big, oft-used imagination.) Friends, thank you for being in our lives; we are better for knowing you.
