Aren’t we all a sucker for a good love story? If you answered “Of course!” , you’re in the right place! One of my favorite parts of being a wedding photographer is watching couples light up with glee and excitement from the newness from finding the person they will spend the rest of their lives with! It’s an emotion like no other! How they met. How he proposed. I love all of it! I’ll never forget that time in my life while I was dating the guy that I knew I would marry. My couples always end up asking me “What about you & Hunter?” So I decided to share with you the story of us!

Here’s our story of how we went from a church camp fling to wedding rings! 

PART 1: HOW WE MET 

PART 2: BEST FRIENDS THAT HELD HANDS

PART 3: FRIDAY NIGHT VICTORY

PART 4: DANCIN’ THE NIGHT AWAY

PART 5: CLASS OF 2014

PART 6: I SAID YES

PART 7: 5,000 MILES APART

PART 8: MAY 15, 2016

Warning the next portion of this story is so “junior high” you may laugh out loud. After months of texting, staying up way too late talking on the phone, and pretending that we were just friends (yeah right!), Hunter finally figured out that I had a pretty big crush on him (shocker, I know). Let’s also keep in mind that entire monologue is through a series of text messages. How silly is that?! Anyway, I told him that I didn’t want to ruin our friendship if he didn’t feel the same way. He replied that he did in fact feel the same way (another shocker) and that if I wanted to we could “give us a try”. That was April 28, 2009 and from then on we were Hunter and Jannah. I was 12 & he was 13.

 

The first few years of our relationship were very different than the relationships that others our own age had. Most junior high romances lasted maybe a couple of months at most. Meanwhile, we were celebrating our first year as boyfriend and girlfriend in the 8^th grade. We definitely did not fit in whatsoever. We decided to embrace the difference and just enjoy our time with one another.

 

Although we were young, the root of our relationship survived because we were just really good friends deep down. We could turn any situation into a good time. We played Wii Bowling together (I always won), went swimming in nearby rivers together, went to youth group together, & anything else two kids without cars could do. He taught me how to trap nutria rats & I taught him how to wear clothes that didn’t have stains or holes. He was at every choir performance and I was at every soccer, basketball, or baseball game. Even though there was obviously a degree of intense feelings for one another even then, mostly we just liked each other a whole lot. We joked all the time that we were “best friends that held hands” & that was exactly what we would always be.

 

People are still to this day surprised that we never broke up at any point along our journey. There’s no secret really, we were just a boy and a girl that were ready to take on life together.