Everybody enjoys a good love story, well this one is about my husband and me. To start I will give y’all a little information about him. His name is Daniel, and at work people call him Daniel, but I will always call him Danny. He was born near Madrid Spain, but he doesn’t look Spanish (although he is fully fluent in Spanish and speaks it really well). He sells paint for Sherwin Williams as a Sales Representative, and is absolutely amazing at his job. He is my best friend, he is my number one supporter, he was the first man I truly loved.
So, the year is 2014 and I decided that for New Years I wanted to go to Nashville for Bassnectar 360. Up until this year I had never done anything for New Years because my moms’ birthday is December 31. However, I asked her if she would be ok with me going and she said yes, so I got the ticket and had plans to go. At first, I was supposed to stay with a girl I went to college with that lived in Franklin, TN. She asked if I could bring her other friend Josh to Nashville with me, I said yeah that shouldn’t be a problem. So, the original plan was for Josh and me to drive up to Nashville together, meet up with the girl at the concert, and stay at her house. Well that entire planned changed.
I was at my grandpa’s house in Mississippi one night and I got a call from my friend Sid. He asked if I would give him and Danny a ride to Bassnectar 360, they had tickets but didn’t want to drive so they were trying to find a way to get there. I remember asking “who is Danny??”. Now, me and Danny had met before, in passing, twice. But the interactions were so quick I really didn’t remember who he was, and he admits that he just remembered me as being the girl with super blonde hair. Regardless, I was pretty good friends with Sid so I agreed to take him, and this Danny guy, to Nashville with me. So, four of us shoveled into my Ford Fiesta and the journey began. That was the first day I officially met my husband, December 30, 2014.
OK so we arrived to Nashville on December 30, really late at night. Sid and Danny decided to lie to me and tell me they had a hotel room for two night, when they actually only had a hotel for the night of December 31. We had to drive around for hours looking for a hotel with a room available. I honestly was annoyed with him; I barely knew him and my first impression was that he really sucked for lying to me. Regardless, Josh (the other guy in the car) blessed us all and paid for the hotel room the night of December 30th. The morning of December 31st Danny and me were outside the hotel smoking a cigarette (gross but we use to smoke back then, I am happy to say that we both quit years ago), I looked at him and asked if he had a girlfriend. He said “no, why?” I asked him if he would kiss me when it was officially the new year. Like I said I had never really celebrated New Years without my family, so I had never been kissed at midnight on New Years day. Literally, I look back and think wow I had some guts for asking someone I barely knew to kiss me, I mean I didn’t even know if he thought I was cute. But he replied yes, and that was that. We were going to kiss that night, and I don’t know if I ever told him (even to this day) that I was excited by his answer. I definitely wanted to kiss him, and I just got confirmation he wanted to kiss me too.
We went to the concert, and the countdown finally began for the new year. Once the confetti and balloons started to fall, he looked at me and we both shrugged, then we kissed. When I say we kissed I mean he REALLY kissed me, I was expecting a peck but no, we really really kissed. It honestly felt like a moment out of a movie. But right after we kissed Bassnectar started playing some crazy music and we went back into full concert mode. I could tell he felt something in the kiss, there was no way he couldn’t have because he kissed ME, I was legit going in for a peck. So, January 1st, 2015 was the first time I ever kissed my husband. And let me just say it was a hell of a kiss.
When we got back to Hattiesburg, MS (where we went to college) we remained friends. We actually hung out all the time throughout the months of January and February. But it wasn’t in the way you’re thinking, we were just friends. Both of us were actually seeing other people at the time, we weren’t in committed relationships (basically meaning nothing was “Facebook” official) but we were seeing other people. We would hang out and just talk, a lot of the time we talked about the fact that my mom had just tested positive for CDH1 and I was terrified that I might have it to. He was really there for me, sometimes we would stay up and talk all night. I even fell asleep at his house a few times and nothing happened between us, we would literally just sleep. I started calling him my best friend, and I started to become friends with his friends. I didn’t know what we were, it was all really confusing. I knew that I was seeing someone in New Orleans, and although it wasn’t a committed relationship, I felt bad spending so much time with Danny because me and the guy in New Orleans would go on dates and hang out almost every weekend. I also knew that Danny was seeing someone, and she wasn’t a huge fan of him and me being so close, so that also made me feel really bad. But we couldn’t stay away from each other.
I started to notice around Valentine’s day that I was jealous of the girl he was seeing, which was wrong of me because I was seeing someone too. But I remember he took her out for a date that night, and I remember wishing that it was me instead. I believe it was late February when I really came to the realization that I liked him, like A LOT. We were both at a concert in New Orleans to see Excision at the Joy Theater. Danny was there with the girl he was seeing; I was there with the guy from New Orleans I was seeing. But I knew that I had feelings for Danny, I just didn’t know he felt the same way. I introduced the guy I was seeing in New Orleans to Danny, I said “hey I want you to meet my best friend Danny, we go to school together.” And that was it. We didn’t talk to rest of the show. However, I do remember that Danny was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a Pelicans hat backwards. I felt guilty for watching him the whole night, I barely even remember the show. I later found out that Danny told the girl he was seeing that he had feelings for me that night. A few days later I told the guy I was seeing that I had feelings for Danny. I do feel really bad about the way it all went down, but I’m sorry to say I don’t regret any of it. If I could go back and do it the exact same way I would because I wouldn’t change us ending up together for anything.
The entire “revealing of the feelings to each other” happened right before I went home for spring break. Danny refused to ask me to be his girlfriend over text so he waited for me to get back to school. I walked into his house right when I got back, he picked me up and kissed me and asked me to be his girlfriend. I replied with “I’ll have to think about it… but yes.” We started dating on March 12, 2015. By summer vacation we had tickets to three music festivals together, and I stored all of my belongings in his house for summer break. I even had drawers in his room, we basically were already living together. The first month of summer break we went to Wakarusa, counterpoint, and Bonnaroo (all music festivals). I lived in his house for that month, then I went home to Maryland for the rest of summer break. When I returned for school in the fall, I still had a room in my sorority house but I lived with Danny in an apartment off campus. The following semester I cancelled my campus housing and moved in with him completely. And just like that we were living together.
Two years went by, two years of so much love, and fights, and all the emotions of an early relationship. I had honestly never been in a serious relationship before my husband, I had never lived with a boy before, so all of this was very new to me. He got a promotion for his job in Jackson, MS and I went with him. I commuted to college my entire last semester so I could live with him. Danny was there on my graduation day in December of 2016, and I knew that he wanted to marry me. We had actually picked out a ring in November of 2016 so I knew it was coming, I just had no idea when. I went home to Maryland for Christmas that year and I flew back to Mississippi on December 30, 2016. When I got off the plane, in the New Orleans airport, I saw Danny waiting for me at baggage claim. He said he missed me so much, and I said “calm down its only been ten days!”. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his friend Mitch recording us and I knew at that moment exactly what was happening, he was about to ask me to marry him. I kid you not I turned into a tomato, my face was sooooo red. Also, nobody knows this but I actually had a UTI at the time, the anxiety of the moment combined with the UTI made me panic and I had to pee SO BAD. Danny got down on his knee and said “two years ago today we first met, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, will you marry me?” Obviously, I said yes. Boom, I was officially engaged.
Danny and me both knew that we wanted a really small wedding, we just didn’t know when, and we both had jobs so it was super hard to plan anything. We stayed engaged for two years. We moved four times the first year we were engaged, so life was really hectic. My sister got married in July of 2018 and we decided it was time to buckle down and plan our wedding, I mean my sister got engaged way after me so we felt it was definitely time to make this happen. We planned a small wedding at the Jackson, TN courthouse on December 7, 2018. Let me just say that nobody in my family told me that was Pearl Harbor until after the day was set in stone, I also blame myself for not googling the date and my lack of history knowledge. Regardless, the day was perfect to me. I wore his mothers wedding dress, my great grandmothers blue ring, and white Vans. Yes, I wore sneakers on my wedding day. It was small, intimate, and perfect. We didn’t have a professional photographer, instead we got a really nice camera and had my friend Elise take pictures for us (which turned out way better because she did a great job and we got a really nice camera out of the deal).
Danny and me still live in Jackson, TN. We are still very much in love. We still fight and disagree, but we always make up before bedtime 😊 I am flooding this post with a slideshow of pictures, the first one is the very first picture we took together before the Bassnectar concert. Then you will see some of our engagement pictures, some from our wedding, and just some of us doing life together. I love you Danny, I always will.
