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The Story of Us : Where It All Began

One of the best parts about being wedding photographers is meeting with newly engaged couples and getting to hear their story. We LOVE getting all the details about how they met, what the proposal was like, and everything in between. There is always something so fun about looking back and reminiscing about the beginning… before you knew you had found the person you would grow old with. After we hear our couples’ story, they usually want to know ours, so we decided we would share a little bit of it here over the next few months!

THE BEGINNING

I honestly don’t remember the first time I saw him. I was on a recruiting trip to meet the track and cross country team and check out the University of Louisville campus to see if I wanted to continue my running career there after high school. The trip was filled with meeting new people and seeing new places and general information overload… the whole thing is kind of a blur in my memories. I was mostly concerned about meeting the other girls who might be on the team and deciding if I wanted to live with any of them, to be honest. Chris claims he noticed me right away, but I swear he didn’t speak to me at all on the that whole trip. He was one of the top runners in the state in high school, and I remember the cross country coach at U of L being so excited to show me his locker and point him out on the team… but I had no idea who he was!

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In the end, I chose to accept the offer to compete at U of L, and when I arrived on campus that fall, I finally figured out who this Chris Danks guy was. We spent most of our time either in class or with the team… riding the bus to and from practice, running together, stretching, doing drills, lifting weights, taking ice baths… it was about as romantic as it sounds. (And if you’re wondering what an ice bath is, it’s where you literally sit in a tub of ice water for 12 minutes in an attempt to make your legs feel less like jello and death after a hard workout.) Chris and I had the same sarcastic sense of humor and he would drive me home from practice every now and then or sit by me on the bus, but I didn’t realize I was falling for him until one particular trip to the movies in October 2006.

He asked me to the movies, and I remember telling my roommates about it. We analyzed the situation for awhile to determine if this was meant to be a date or not. Because Chris and I were athletes and teammates, we didn’t even call each other by our first names – he called me Dukes (my maiden name) and I called him Danks… hilarious and not at all romantic. As it turns out, half our team was going to this movie with us, so I think it’s safe to say it was NOT intended to be a date. We ended up carpooling to the movie (you guys, I got carded to get into the rated R movie… in college… I’m still traumatized) so we rode there together with a few of our teammates. I don’t even remember if we sat next to each other at the movie! All I remember clearly is the drive home…

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The team had taken about four cars to the movie, and Chris was one of the guys who drove. Everyone else was in a four-wheel-drive vehicle of some kind, and Chris was chauffeuring us around in his Honda Civic. This wouldn’t have made much difference except that when we left the theater it started to rain… and by the time we got back to campus, it had turned into a severe flash flood with roads so far underwater that we couldn’t get back to our apartments. It was like nothing I have seen before – so much rain in such a short time and people driving the wrong way on one way roads just trying to avoid flooded underpasses and make their way home. Tons of people were stranded because they had tried to drive through too much water and ended up flooding their car. Chris repeatedly stopped and got out in the POURING rain, loaned his phone and umbrella to these strangers, and generally just loved and served people who were panicked and alone… It still gives me chills because that was the first moment I knew… I liked this guy with long, wavy hair and earrings. And that’s really where it all began…

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