How we met

The perfect place to start a wedding blog is at the beginning … so here goes.

Groomasaurus Gal and I met in a record store. Yep, you read that right. A record store. You see, we’re both music aficionados. Well, that’s putting it lightly. We’re unapologetic and incurable music junkies. To date, between the two of us we own a few walls worth of CDs and untold vinyl and cassette albums (the big step in moving our relationship forward was combining our music collections, but that’s another blog entry).

With that preface out of the way, here’s the story. It was a balmy afternoon in late June and I was bored and decided to browse in one of my favorite record stores in Denver. The place is called Jerry’s Record Exchange, and it’s owned by a cranky, crusty, loveable guy named John who is the consummate record snob. I’ve actually witnessed him literally laugh in the face of someone who once asked if he had any Shania Twain (all apologies to her fans) and tell them to go to Tower (back when Tower was still around).

I was over in the dance/electronica section (I have a soft spot for house music) browsing for god know what when I noticed the alluring woman next to me browsing through some really mediocre Paul Oakenfold dance mixes. She eventually settled on one, at which point I told her that she didn’t want that one. She looked at me a bit circumspectly (like “Who is this freak?”), and I told her that there were much better discs by the prince of DJs.

Of course, when a stranger tells you your choice of music is a bit off, most of us would flash the “talk to the hand” sign and make for the door. Kudos to her for sticking around and debating the ebbs and flows of Paul Oakenfold’s career as well as other and varied topics (Groomasaurus Gal is an attorney, meaning she is very good at debating). So after chatting about music for a half-hour or so, we were both finished browsing and we ready to purchase our CDs. This is where I turned into a typical, clueless male idiot.

Instead of asking for her phone number or if she wanted to meet up for a drink sometime, for some unspeakable reason I started talking baseball with the owner of the store (I know he’s a lifelong Cubs fan, and I’m an Indians fan, so we have years of futility to draw from). Although I do enjoy a day at the ballpark, there’s only one thing more dreadfully boring than watching a baseball, and that’s two guys talking about baseball. I’m sure cancer could have been cured by now or the economy righted if guys would only focus on the task at hand and stop talking about sports, but I digress.

Needless to say, when I finally pull my head out of my a**, I discover that the wonderful woman with whom I was talking was gone. This was the point where I walked outside and ran my head into a parking meter about a dozen times because I’m so stupid. Anyways, I was heading out of town that weekend to hang out with a bunch of friends for 4th of July in Chicago, and I decided I’d call up the owner of the record store when I got back to ask for that woman’s phone number.

She beat me to it, god bless her. When I got back to town, I discovered a voicemail from Groomasaurus Gal asking me if I would like to join her for a drink or “beverage of some sort.” Seems that she called the owner of the record store before I could. This will remain the only time in my life I was actually stalked, and I’m so proud of it. Of course I couldn’t dial the phone fast enough, and we had our first date a few days later, oddly at a restaurant that neither of us likes that much. (Years later I discovered that women consider this place good for a first date because the bar is right next to the front door and within feet of a transit shuttle in case they need to make a quick getaway. Good thinking.)

But the kicker was our second date. Paul Oakenfold was actually performing at Red Rocks, and it had been sold out for weeks, so I figured I’d go up with her and her friend and get a scalped ticket. Problem was that nobody was selling. I told her to go in, as it was no use for her and her friend to miss the show, and I’d hang out in the parking lot and stare at the stars or something equally ridiculous. Unfazed, she hatched up a plan in which she sweet-talked a security guard into letting me in and slipped me her friend’s ticket stub, saying it had fallen off in the parking lot. The guy actually bought it!! If I had tried this, he and his bouncer henchmen would have stuffed me in a trash barrel and spent the rest of the night pinging beer cans off my head. At this moment, I realized three things about this woman: 1) She is way smarter than me. 2) She will stop at nothing to make other people happy. 3) She is what I’ve always been looking for. The rest is history (which we will save for another day).