Wedding Date on Dec 31, 2017

Our casual non-fictional meet cute, as told by Jared: During the Summer of 2013, I was living in downtown Charlotte while Amanda frequently visited from her home at the time, Raleigh. On a Saturday in June, I was at Post Apartments in Southend for a pool party when I decided to casually sit on Amanda's poolside chair to introduce myself. Amanda's maid of honor and best friend from college, Brittney, lived at Post Apartments Southend at the time. Amanda and I later lived there as well, with my groomsman, Josh. After an extremely short conversation that day at the pool, we did not see each other again until a few months later when Amanda relocated to Charlotte permanently. [Amanda's relocation may or may not have been attributed to her meeting me on her pool chair that day.] After a few instances of running into each other, we had a long conversation one Thursday evening at Bubble [a local bar at the EpiCenter in Uptown] along with some of Amanda's friends. At approximately 2:00am that same evening [turned early morning], Amanda snatched my phone from my hands to put her number in my contact list. Not more than a couple of days later, we started spending time together--mostly connecting over our love of Sons of Anarchy and cooking good food. Beginning in September of 2013, we began dating.I fell in love with Amanda, found out the feeling was mutual and since then we've fallen in love with building what we consider to be a pretty great life in Charlotte. The Year of Wedding Planning, as told by Amanda: 2017 was a magical, stressful, fun, taxing, long and also short year--wedding planning will do that to your experience of a year with your partner and the memories associated. Jared and I enjoyed so many of the moments and experiences, particularly celebrations with our family and friends leading up to the wedding including our Bachelorette and Bachelor parties, engagement party, bridal shower, vendor meetings and the wedding weekend's events. Then there were moments like designing (and redesigning) seating charts, crafting a wedding budget, and the other not-so-glamourous sides of wedding planning no one tells you about when you get engaged. Those moments can seem so overwhelming at first, so my advice to future brides is the same advice my uncle gave me when we were a little ways into the year of wedding planning that really stuck with me and became a constant reminder. His advice was to not let any one decision or moment or opinion from anyone carry any substantial or longterm stress or weight because in twenty years, the only people who will still be talking about your wedding day are you two--the Bride and Groom. Take everyone's opinions and suggestions and politely say thanks; then do whatever you want, because it's a guarantee you're the only one who will care long into the future. I wouldn't change one single moment of 2017 and am grateful for the hard work that Jared, our families, friends, vendors and I put into creating the most incredible day of celebrations. Jared and I are looking forward to watching the moments One Love captured and talking about how wonderful that day was for the rest of our lives...