Our Love Story

November 7, 2015

Before Dating

In July of 2011, I had just graduated high school the month before, and my mother gave me the “Either go to school or get a job” speech. The problem with this is that I didn’t have a car or someone that could take me to school and I couldn’t afford a car without getting a job, so the logical thing to do was get a job and save up to buy a car. So, I applied at Dollar General that was 5 minutes from the house, which was the only place I applied and actually got hired almost right away.

Now, my husband, Thomas, worked with Flowers Baking delivery bread and other pastry snacks at the time of me work at Dollar General and actually delivered to our store twice a week. When I first started working I didn’t get too many hours so I didn’t started seeing him until we were on our 3rd store manager. When I finally did start to see him, me being as shy as I am, didn’t talk to him at all for months/years.

By the time we were onto our 3rd manager, I was promoted to a key holder, and being a key holder, one of the responsibilities is to check in vendors, so I was basically forced into interacting with more people and vendors. Tuesdays and Thursdays were our bread days and Thomas went from delivering in the mornings to suddenly coming in the evenings when I worked. (I didn’t think anything of this at the time because honestly I’m blind to any sort of flirting and what not.)

December of 2013 was roughly when we really started talking/texting. At the time it was nothing romantic as I wasn’t sure how he felt about me, heck I didn’t even know how I felt about him, but since he was a vendor and I was a key holder (I believe Assistant Manager at this point) I didn’t know what the rules were about relationships between the two.

The Start of Something

In January of 2014, Thomas left Flowers Baking to be a vendor with Pepperidge Farm. He no longer serviced our store anymore and by this point I had just about had it with Dollar General. (Future post to come of my experience working there) We started talking more and more and went on, what I would now call, dates since we no longer saw each other at DG. January 24, 2014 was the day we started dating.

From there, our relationship grew very fast and we experienced a lot together. Many job changes, house changes, life and relationship changes. From the very beginning we both felt like we were meant to be together. I had never been in a relationship before, but I couldn’t imagine ever dating anyone else. Our connection was strong and we had so much understanding of each other, our feelings and the way we worked together. We were partners and mixed so well together.

The Dating Life

From the moment me and Thomas started dating, my manager knew something was different with me. She suspected I was dating someone and while I was in love, I didn’t want to tell her. She hated Thomas and I knew it, but it eventually came out and things changed instantly.

I went from being her favorite employee and even though I was the hardest and most dedicated employee she had, she hated me. She treated me poorly, wrote me up for anything and everything and set expectations I couldn’t meet. I dreaded going into work and would call Thomas almost every day say I wanted to quit, but he wanted me to stick it out and if I really wanted to quit, to do it the correct way. One day when I really couldn’t take it anymore, he called me and said a Christian Store was hiring and to call the manager.

So January of 2015 I put in my notice and started working at Family Christian and said good riddance to the job that brought me and Thomas together.

Engagement

On the 24th of July Thomas proposed and we set the wedding date for a few months from then. It was very fast, a bit stressful but everything worked out perfectly. That is, until the week before the wedding. It was set to happen in a pavilion next to the main building of my moms church. However, it had started to rain and even if it didn’t rain on the day of the wedding, the floor of the pavilion would be too slippery to be safe.

Our only option at this point was to pay extra to have the wedding in the main building of the church. This part actually ended up working out beautifully and I’m happy it worked out this way, though at the time it was pretty stressful. The second thing that happened was the night before the wedding, we had just finished decorating for the next day when we got a call from our caterer. The grill that he uses to cook the food had broken and had no other way to cook the food. Luckily, the church had agreed to let him use the grill that is located in the pavilion.

Wedding

The day of our wedding took place on November 7, 2015 and it couldn’t have gone more perfect. Looking back at it now, there’s not a single thing I would change about it. We were surrounded by the people that mattered most to us. Had friends we hadn’t seen in a while show up and celebrate with us. And in the end I got to marry my very best friend.

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