Congrats Hillary & Justin!

Had a blast at Justin's and Hillary's wedding recently. Here's how they met and fell in love.

As I understand it, the first glance for these two occurred at 1980s theme party. In February 2013, to celebrate 16 years of being in business, SweetWater Brewery brought in food trucks, and invited patrons to embrace a 1980s dress code. But somehow Justin and his friend missed these details…and were the only two people at the party not dressed in 80s gear.

But not Hillary, who was wearing acid wash jeans, bright blue eyeshadow, crimped hair, and bright lipstick. During the party, Justin saw Hillary with her friends, struggling…to take a selfie. And he seized the moment. He stepped in and offered to take the picture.

After the picture, they talked…and, with their friends, decided to hang out the rest of the day. The group hopped to another bar down the road. And Hillary and Justin ended up in a corner table, talking, joking, getting to know one another. They exchanged numbers at the end of the night, parted ways, and even texted back and forth as Hillary travelled back to Chattanooga. “We couldn’t enough of one another,” was how they put it to me. 

In the ensuing months, they went to concerts, parks, and new restaurants, they rode bikes together, they travelled back and forth from Atlanta to Chattanooga every weekend to see one another.

And in the ensuing years, they explored important questions, shared goals and dreams, and eventually began to be able to see one another as a partner.

And then late one afternoon in November of 2014, at Justin’s parents house in Maryland, Justin woke Hillary from a nap on the couch, invited her to take a walk by the river just off the Chesapeake Bay, and led her to the end of a dock, where he grew extremely nervous that the engagement ring might fall through the cracks.

Even still, he managed to hang on, to say a number of nice things. 

And as the sun was setting and the night air was cooling, he asked for Hillary’s hand in marriage.