Wedding Date on Oct 12, 2019

Our Love Story written by Lauren: I’ve always just known certain things. Some people call it intuition. Some people call it serendipity or just plain luck. I just know that I have a strong deep sense about certain things, sort of like a premonition. It’s a knowing that I’ve grown accustomed to having and to trusting when I’m in the midst of making any big decisions.. Sometimes my knowing begins in my dreams, and sometimes it comes to me when I meet a person for the first time. In the case of my fiancee, my deep knowing came when I swiped right in a dating app. Throwback to March 2017. I was a single 26 year old bachelorette living in Atlanta, GA. With the rise in dating app relationships, I wanted to see firsthand what it was all about. I’ll have to admit, I was hesitant. But at the end of the day it's a piece of technology that brings people together, right?! So I put my hesitations aside, and I decided to download Bumble. Downloading the Bumble dating app was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made because I met Patrick Steven LaPaglia. Right when we matched, I had a feeling that this man was going to be in my life. I made the first move and messaged him in the app. We messaged back and forth, and there was no wiping the cheesy grin off my face! Then he asked for my phone number...lawd you should have seen my face! I was so excited! I showed my girlfriends his profile and told them I had one of my feelings. They knew not to question when I had one of my “feelings” because they have experienced them first hand. But after a few weeks went by with no text from Pat, I started to question myself. I knew he added me on instagram and he was liking the pictures I was posting, but he couldn’t send a girl a text!? I was all kinds of confused and decided that maybe my dating app “feelings” couldn't be trusted. Maybe this time my intuition was just plain off. Fast forward to May 2017, I’m still a single bachelorette living in Atlanta. One of my best girlfriends, Vivian, came to visit me for the weekend. She asked me how my dating life was and I told her that I wasn’t having much luck, especially with the dating apps. I was traveling a lot for work, and I didn’t have time to take it very seriously. I had only gone on one Bumble date with another guy, and it was one date too many. Vivian wanted to see a picture of my awful date so I pulled up the Bumble app to show her his profile. Low and behold.. Patrick LaPaglia’s profile was the FIRST thing to pop up. I grunted loudly and told Vivian how I had matched with him before and gave him my number, but he never reached out to me. I told her how I originally had one of my “feelings” about him, but that flew out the window when I never heard from him. Vivian then said, “Well, just swipe right again and see what happens!” I told her that I was WAY too stubborn to do that.. but then with Vivian’s persistent influence, I put my stubbornness aside and I swiped right for the SECOND time..Then BOOM we matched again right away! I was shocked! The ball was in my court for the second time and it was up to me to reach out... Lauren: Hey there Pat: Hey! I feel like I either owe you a drink or an apology! Lauren: Haha I’ll take you up on that drink Pat: Awesome! Not to be creepy but is your number still xxx-xxx-xxxx? Lauren: Wow you’re so creepy for saving my number the first time I gave it to you… Haha I’m kidding of course. Yes, that’s my number :) A few minutes later, I received my first text message from Pat. I cheesed SO hard. As we messaged back and forth, we decided we would meet up that night for a drink. I was so nervous, especially since he never texted me when he got my number the first time. But all those nerves went away that first moment we met. Pat walked up to me with a big grin on his face and gave me a hug. The FIRST words out of his mouth were, “I want to apologize for not reaching out to you when you gave me your number a couple months back. I had recently gotten out of a long term relationship, and I thought I was ready to date other people, but I realized soon after downloading Bumble that I wasn’t. And that wouldn’t have been fair to either of us. I hope you can give me another shot” I MEAN... that was the most honest, real answer anyone could have asked for. The rest of that weekend, we were inseparable. We spent hours and hours talking to each other. It felt like I had known him forever. When people ask us when we started dating, we always tell them from the first day we met. 1 year, 4 months, and 17 days after I first laid eyes on Patrick LaPaglia, he dropped down on one knee on top of Looking Glass Rock in Asheville, NC and asked me to be his wife. From day one, I’ve never had to second guess my feelings or overthink anything when it comes to our relationship. I’ve never experienced so much love, trust, or adventure with anyone else. He is the reason I smile so big each and every day. I love him more today than I did yesterday and I can’t wait to see how great all of our tomorrows will be. Sometimes, when I’m binge watching Game of Thrones with Pat or we're eating Thai food curled up on the sofa with our rescue dog Trooper, I think to myself, how in the WORLD did I meet my soulmate on Bumble? Or as my grandmother Gaga would say, “Meeting someone on the computah.” It's crazy to think that, had I not swiped right, twice, I might not know my forever person. Is it fate? An act of God? My deep sense of knowing?....Whatever the case may be, Patrick LaPaglia will forever be my foreva eva, my love at first (second) swipe, my best friend, my person. Our Love Story written by Pat: Lauren and I initially “met” on Bumble, the dating app, in March 2017 - about 2 months after a 3+ year relationship I was in ended. At the time I wasn’t really taking Bumble seriously at all, mostly using it get back out into the world (read: rebound) and to shake the cobwebs off, so to speak. It can be hard to meet new people in your late twenties, so like many, I turned to technology to help me out. So that day in March (a Wednesday) I’m sitting at my best friend Tom’s house, cruising Bumble with his wife Jordan looking over my shoulder. We had been swiping left on virtually everyone I came across, and then Lauren’s profile came up. I immediately stopped and took in every square inch of her profile. Eventually, once I had picked my jaw up off the floor, I turned to Jordan and said “this girl ..this is the kind of girl you marry”, and then crossed my fingers and swiped right. Low and behold- WE MATCHED!! We went through the typical small talk and after maybe 10 messages back and forth, I worked up the courage to ask for her number. I say worked up the courage because Lauren was taking what seemed like hours (in reality 10 mins - tops) to respond to each of my carefully crafted attempts to be witty. After a few agonizing minutes, she gave me her number, and I told her I wanted to take her out over the weekend sometime, but that work was crazy right now and that I would reach out later that week. Thursday came and went with me thinking Friday would be the day I called her. Then Friday came, and after a long workday I got home with every intention to do just that.. but I didn’t. As I was sitting there, no doubt memorizing every detail of Lauren’s bumble profile for the 20th time, I got a text from my ex. This development immediately injected doubt into the mix, causing me to hit the brakes on any thoughts of new romance. Defeated, I deleted my profile and then the app entirely. I realized I wasn’t ready for anything new, and thought that this girl -whom I had never met- deserved to be more than a fling. She was the kind of girl you marry after all. I had just committed a cardinal sin - not calling or texting a girl who gave you her number. I spent the next 3 months working on myself. Then one Friday (May 20th), after my coworker Kyle and I had decided to go out for a night on the town, I decided to try my hand at bumble again. Since I had deleted my profile before, I had to start from scratch, and after rebuilding my profile and then swiping left through 2 or 3 profiles, Lauren pops up again. My immediate thought: “YESSSSSS!!!!!.....oh crapppp” Needless to say, I was excited, but also nervous and feeling very guilty for completely ghosting her and not calling. Regardless, I swiped right on her almost without thinking. I had this feeling, deep inside me, that she was going to be special. Plus, I HAD to get a chance explain myself. Much to my disappointment, we didn’t match immediately like last time. But I held out hope and went back to work for a few hours to finish out the week. Upon getting back home I opened up my phone back up and there was a notification saying I had a match and a new message waiting. IT WAS HER! The message was simple- “Hi”…okay, ball’s in my court now. After writing, deleting, rewriting and deleting my message a bunch of times, I settled on “I think I owe you a drink or an apology”, pressed send, and waited. She messaged me back almost immediately and said “I’ll take you up on that drink” causing an ear-to-ear smile on my face. JACKPOT! After some back and forth I found out she was going out that night too, so we exchanged numbers again (even though I still had hers saved from the first time) and made plans to meet up later that night. So that’s how we met. The rest of the story is that I was right (for the last time), I fell in love with her, and then asked her to spend forever with me. But I wanted to ask her in a special way and make the whole day something we could remember forever. I thought I’d do that by taking her on a leisurely 3 mile hike up to Looking Glass Rock, then take her out to celebrate where all of her friends and family would be waiting to surprise her when we walked in. Turns out I made a mild miscalculation that threw everything odd. I misread the distance - it was over 3 miles EACH WAY with a climb of over 1700 ft - Needless to say it was anything but leisurely. But we eventually made it, and she said yes. ( there’s some pretty awesome time-lapse footage of the whole thing ) Afterwards I had to find a way to get her to hustle down the mountain and get ready without her getting suspicious of my plan, because we were running about 3 hours behind schedule. Lauren ended up being the real MVP and got ready in under 30 minutes so we could make our fake reservation time. We walked in and once she saw everyone she immediately started crying. All of her friends and family pulled off an amazing surprise despite being half in the bag, and we all had an amazing night filled with dancing and way, WAY too much tequila. In hindsight, I couldn’t have made the day more memorable if I had tried, and I realize that it’s still only the beginning of a very long, much bigger and messier adventure that I can’t wait to start.