Our Love Story (Part 1)

April 17th marks nine years that Wren and I have been married. In honor of this celebratory date, I will be posting quite a few blog posts centered around our marriage and the love we share for each other. First up: how we met.

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Wren and I met in 2003 at my parent’s home in Provo, Utah. I was seventeen-years-old at the time, and was preparing to graduate from high school in the following weeks. On that very sunny day, Wren- who worked for his mother’s bookstore- came to collect money from my parents for a book my father bought at her store. My parents had gone out for lunch, which left me home alone for the afternoon. To make matters worse, Wren was a day early and neither of my parents had warned me he was coming ahead of schedule. At 1pm the door rang. I ran to answer it, not sure who it could be. It was Sunday, which meant all the mailmen and delivery men were off, and no one in my family ever bothered to knock, they just came on in. So imagine my surprise when I, dressed in my pink polk-a-dot flannels with messy hair, walked down stairs and opened the door to a very handsome man standing in the doorway. I was shocked, dumbfounded for that matter, at not only my appearance, but at the man that was standing at my doorstep. 

“Hello, I’m Wren Kingston… from Cozy Corner Books. I’m here to collect a check for a book bought by someone at this address,” said a 5’11 man, about my age, with curly, dark brown hair and green eyes in a very charming voice. Better yet, he had an English accent. I thought for sure I was seeing Prince Charming.

I invited him to come inside while I called my father to ask him about the check. Admittedly, while I was on the phone with him, I brushed my teeth and combed my hair- attempting to present myself a bit nicer. Then I went downstairs and brought him a glass of water. It was no doubt that he was hot from these late summer temperatures. “My dad forgot you were coming today. He’s sorry. He’s going to pay the bill at the restaurant he’s eating at right now, then head on over. He said you can wait here. It shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes,” I said. Please stay. Please stay, I thought to myself, Who are you? How haven’t I met you before?

To my wishes, he stayed. We got into talking while he sat and waited for my father. As it turns out, we had A LOT in common. We both come from medium/largish sized families (he has four brothers, I have four sisters), we are both Mormon (that’s a big “shocker” considering we lived in Provo), and we were both either done with high school or about to graduate. Wren, who had just returned from a 2-year mission in South Africa, had also gone to the same (very large) high school that I went to, but graduated two years before me. He said he’d heard of me, and even remembered me from the yearbook, and I was very sad I couldn’t say the same. It then came up that we were both single, but we quickly changed the conversation to something else.

Thirty minutes later, my dad arrived home, paid Wren, and then went to his office to work, unaware that I had just met the man of my dreams. I was a little bit sad that the one person who made my weekend interesting was leaving- especially because there was so much we had in common- but I quickly walked him to the door and said goodbye.

It wasn’t until he left that this wave of feeling had entered my body, telling me that this guy was special, and that I’d possibly want to see more of him. I thought about him for the rest of the day, smiling over the details of the day we shared, but questioning if I’d ever see him again. I wanted to call him, but decided not to make the first move. If Wren has any interest in me, he will make the first move, I thought to myself, secretly hoping that he would indeed make the first move.

But he didn’t. He never called. I was gloomy for the first couple of days after our first initial meeting, but quickly forgot about him and continued with life as normal. Then one day, that all changed. It was my sister's birthday, and everyone had gathered at my home to celebrate. We were eating cake and all sharing our favorite childhood memory we shared with my sister, when the phone rang… it was for me.

“Who is it”, I asked my older sister who had answered the phone.

“Well, well, well! It’s someone named Wren,” she said in a teasing voice, “Who is this Wren we have never heard anything about?” And then, right then, I knew asking her who was on the phone was a big mistake. Immediately all my family and friends gathered around the phone, teasing me and making jokes.

“Oh, it’s… it’s no one,” I said, “I’ll just take this call in my room!” I took the phone to my room, thank goodness for the invention of cordless phones, and nervously sat down on my bed. I know one Wren, I thought to myself, Please be who I think this who I think it is!

“Hello”, I said.

“Hi Laura, its Wren. Remember me? I came to your house to pick up a check about two months ago.” Yes, I thought to myself, it's him!

“Yes, I remember. Hi.”

“Well listen, I just wanted to know if you’d like to go on a date with me. I know you never called me back, but…”

“What do you mean”, I said in a concerned voice, “I never called you back because I never got a call from you.”

“I left my number on the receipt, and just wanted to make sure everything was okay. It seemed like we really had chemistry.”

“I thought so too. And I’m sorry, I never looked at the receipt after you left. I just sat it on my dad’s desk. But now that I have your number, I don’t have to worry about finding it.”

“Oh, that's okay. Well, what do you say? Monday night, 8 o’clock?” Oh, that voice! I had never cared about men with accents, but Wren's accent was sexy, manly, and sweet all rolled into one.

“That would be nice. I’ll see you then. Byeeee,” I said, trying to hide the fact that I was over-the-moon excited. After I got off the phone, I went to find my dad to ask him about the receipt, one that could have gotten me a date with Richard weeks ago.

“Dad,” I said, after finding him in our home library reading a book. “Did you happen to find a receipt with a phone number… about two months ago?”

“By a matter of fact, Laura, I did. It was from Cozy Corner Books.”

“Yes dad, well why didn’t you give it to me?”

As it turns out, he thought I already knew about the cellphone number on the receipt, and as the good dad that he is, he ignored it and had trust in the decision I was going to make. How could I get made at that?

For the next couple of days I anxiously anticipated our first date and could not wait until October 6th when I'd finally get to see Wren again.

Next up: our first date...