How We Met

Lisa was called to be the Relief Society president in her ward in 2004. In 2005 the rest of her presidency all moved away and she got brand new counselors and secretary. All of them were married, and Melissa in particular took an interest in setting Lisa up. She found out Lisa had registered on a website for LDS people to meet so she could laugh at the profiles her friends were laughing at. Melissa registered as well, with Lisa's knowledge, and she and her husband started doing searches to find guys they thought would be Lisa's type and then they'd e-mail them and tell them to check Lisa out.

Brett was one of the guys they e-mailed. But he was the only guy to respond. He didn't notice that Melissa was married and thought it was weird that Melissa would be scouting out guys for her friend rather than for herself. He figured he'd show her and e-mail Lisa.

Our first exchange went like this:

Brett105 Sent:  1/28/2006 10:52:27 AM EST
Your friend Melissa441 said I should contact you if I'm not intimidated by greatness. I am not afraid. By the way, don't let the pictures on my profile scare you away. I wasn't in a serious mood when I put them up there. People tell me I should change them. I probably will. Someday. But trust me anyway. I'm hot. And I have great shoes.

Brett105

(PS... Belly dancing? Hmmmm.....) 

Eilonwy Sent:  1/30/2006 9:26:23 PM EST
I can be very intriguing. Maybe you should be afraid. ;)

Tell me more about your shoes.

Soon we were communicating rather regularly.

Dating and Distance

For our first date, Brett came up to Utah and over the course of three days we went to the Church History Museum, stopped at Lisa's mission reunion, Aida at the Hale Center Theatre, dinner with Lisa's presidency and their spouses, General Conference in the Conference Center (Lisa's friends Sally and Jason set us up with great tickets for Saturday morning, and her dad got us tickets for Sunday afternoon), meeting Lisa's grandpa, meeting Lisa's uncle, meeting Brett's parents and sister. It was a full date. Brett maintains though that it still would have been a great date even if Lisa hadn't shown him her fleas from her mission.

The second date was several weeks later in Tucson. The highlight of this date was driving out to Tombstone and watching a recreation of several of the more famous shootings and a tour of the Bird Cage Theater, which was used for multiple forms of entertainment.

Later that summer we both met the rest of each other's families (except for Brett's brother) when they all happened to be in Utah at the same time.

Lisa went back down to Tucson at the end of the summer and we went to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. Brett came up for Thanksgiving with his family and spent some time with Lisa then as well.

But dating from 700+ miles is difficult, so things cooled down to the level of friendly communication online through 2007.

Closing the Gap

Despite Brett's insistance that she shouldn't, Lisa moved to Tucson at the beginning of 2008 to start her Doctorate degree (she still listens to him about as much as she did then).

Being a lot closer now, we saw each other a lot more. Over the course of 2008 we started to build our friendship back up again. In January of 2009, Lisa asked Brett, purely out of curiosity, what he called her when he talked to other people. In the ensuing discussion Brett told Lisa that why not just stop the ambiguity and he would call her his girlfriend and she could call him his boyfriend and we were officially exclusively dating. So that was settled.

In May we told each other we loved each other. (Brett said it first. Lisa replied with, "Really?")

In June 2009 Brett proposed.

In November 2009 we were married.

And the story will just keep going from here.