The Boy & his sweetheart: part one || dallas, tx wedding photographer

This is the story of a boy and a girl.  It’s a story that in the most general sense has been told again and again over hundreds of years, without ever seeming the same, or growing old.  It’s simple and sweet, no movies will be made from it, and it’s really not very glamorous, but it’s real and it’s ours, and therefore one of my favorite stories to tell.

Our story starts 27 years ago today.  (At least that’s where I’ve chosen to start.)  August 10^th, 1985 was the wedding day for two adorable happily in love couples.  Hundreds of miles apart, but within a few hours of each other they promised to love each other faithfully, became Mr. & Mrs., and started a new adventure.  Three and a half years later (almost to the day) a little brown-eyed boy was born in Bad Axe, MI to one of those adorable couples.  Just thirteen days after that, in Plano, TX the other couple was excited to welcome a bald headed blue-eyed little girl into their life.

And so our two lives began, Joshua Caleb & Jessica Shae.

We spent the next 22 years growing up.  In some ways our growing up was similar to each other, we were both pastors kids (better known as “PK’s”), he played baseball I played softball, our families moved quite a bit, and we both had plenty of siblings to play with: he had 4 and I had 6.  But in other ways those 22 years were quite different for the two of us.  I was homeschooled, he was public+private schooled.  He lived in Indiana for most of those years, I lived in Texas and Colorado.  He was quiet and shy for the first 13+ years of his life, I on the other hand never shut-up and loved being the center of attention.  In High school he was a jock, and kind of the cutest/handsomest thing I’ve ever seen (I only know this from pictures + stories his family has so kindly shared—see below ;), while I on the other hand “thought” that I was very cool and stylish but was in fact, quite the nerd. (again, see below.)  After high school he went to college, starting out as an architect major, but switching to accounting after his first year.  I graduated high school and spent the next four years traveling, living in Chicago and working for a Christian ministry, working for my dad, and then eventually starting my photography business.

The summer before Josh’s senior year of high school (2007) his family moved from Indiana, to Mckinney, Texas.   They ended up moving back to Indiana 14 months later, but by the time they realized that they were going to have to move back Josh had already enrolled and started classes at a college about an hour away.  So they moved back home, leaving Josh to continue college in Texas.

The summer of 2009 my family moved for the 5^th time in 2 years. (Told you we moved a lot.)  We moved from Austin to Dallas, hoping that it would be our last move for a while.  When we moved we thought we already had a church picked out, but after attending there for a few weeks we started to think that maybe we needed to find somewhere else to go.  Around that time, some old friends of ours invited us to their church in Mckinney, and we went.  It just happened to be the same church that Josh’s family had attended while they lived here and the church that Josh was still attending.

Apparently we met that day, on June 28^th, 2009.  Unfortunately, I have no remembrance of this.

Apparently he preached in the evening service that night, along with two other guys in the college group.  Again, no memory of this.

Needless to say, it was not love at first sight ;)

I have a handful of memories about him from the next two months.  We were in the same college and career Sunday School class, and did a few group activities together.  Really the only clear memory I have of him from that Summer was of an afternoon we spent with a group of friends from church at the mall.  We (“we” being the whole group) spent the day wandering aimlessly from store to store, eating in the food court, and talking.  He made me laugh a lot that day, and we had fun talking and joking about several things.  I had been told that he was interested in a girl from church so I was conscientious of not seeming “overly” friendly… besides, I wasn’t interested in him anyways.  He wasn’t “my type.”  But I went home that day and absentmindedly thought to myself, “that boy could be really cute if he’d just grow his hair out longer.” (at the time he had almost completely shaved his head—not his best look.)  Whereas I found out recently that he went back to school that evening and while telling a friend about his day mentioned that there had been a “really pretty girl” in the group of people that went to the mall that day.

All through high school I would hear girls complain about how “they just couldn’t help liking him” or something along those lines.  I always felt the need to correct them, because in my opinion, while attraction is instinctive—that gut reaction of clicking with someone when you meet them, or finding out you’re interested in the same things… Like/Love is a choice, and only happens when you choose to allow that attraction to turn into something deeper.  

I was attracted to Him.  But I did not like him.

The attraction was a very mild case.  I just knew that I thought he was funny, and fun to be around.  That’s all.

So, when he stopped going to our church about a month later because the hour drive was getting too long for him, I barely noticed his absence.  Other than the occasional glimpses I would catch of his life whenever something popped up in my newsfeed about him, I barely remembered he existed over the next 18 months.

And then one cold January day, he showed back up at church…

 (part 2 to follow)

Much Love,

Jessica Shae