Wedding Date on May 9, 2018

From the bride: "Jessica and Jesse have been together over 12 years and it all started in college! As a fresh Freshman (only 2 months in!), Jessica was walking in the student union late one Sunday night with a friend, when Jesse noticed Jesse wearing a sweatshirt that said Berlin Brothersvalley Track & Field. Jesse had briefly moved from Pittsburgh for high school after her mother remarried to a small town nearby where Jesse grew up called Berlin. Berlin is actually just a few miles from Shanksville where Flight 93 went down on 9/11 when Jessica was a sophomore. Typically people would hear she was from Berlin and think she was from Berlin, Germany. She would respond with "no, Berlin like Synders of Berlin" - which is a snack chip company in Pennsylvania - or she would tell people she lived next to Shanksville, Pennsylvania since that gave a frame of reference. Well, Jesse ask her if she was from "Berlin, like Synders of Berlin" since his dad actually worked there (the factory was right behind the Berlin Brothersvalley high school - and yes you could smell the chips and in school, chips were only 15 cents. Fresh off of a terrible breakup, Jesse was pretty gutsy to go up to a random girl and strike up conversation. Jessica replied with a snarky, "no, Berlin like Berlin, Germany," laughed and walked away. Poor Jesse haha. But Jessica had also recently broke up with her high school boyfriend and was heartbroken herself, so the last thing on her mind was giving a boy the time of day! Jesse said he would often see Jessica over the next couple of months, but Jessica always says she couldn't "pick him out of a lineup." One time he even saw her at a hockey game just outside where he grew up since he referred hockey games and she had friends who played hockey in the high schools he refereed. Boy did that make him mad haha. Not too much after that, Jesse had his wisdom teeth out and while heavily medicated, finally got the guts to talk to Jessica again as she visited some of his friends that she had become friends with at his dorm. Wouldn't it be a great story if we started dating then and have been together ever since?? Welllll, it took another year and a half to finally make it official. Jesse actually asked Jessica to be his girlfriend two times, and each time she said no until finally he said he was done asking and she would have to ask HIM! So, a few months later, she took him out for a date at Denny's (pancakes are the BEST) and SHE asked him to be her boyfriend. We've been boyfriend and girlfriend every day since October 19th, 2005! After being together for 10 years, it's probably going to be hard to surprise someone with a proposal, but Jessica was definitely surprised! We had lived apart for more than half of our relationship and when we both moved out to Cleveland (separately - Jesse first for work and then Jessica a year and a half later), we felt like we had finally found a city to put down roots. So, we started looking for houses, but also talked about getting engaged. We decided it was one or the other though! And a month later we had found a house quicker than anticipated and put in an offer over Labor Day. While Jessica was in Chicago for work, our realtor told us we had got the house! Jesse picked up Jessica from the airport a few days later and as they pulled into the driveway, he handed her...a slip of yellow paper. Haha. It was a receipt for a ring he had bought, but that wasn't ready yet. So there in the work Dodge Ram truck outside of our garage, he proposed. But it was a surprise! And Jessica said yes! "