One day I decided that I was reaching 30, still single, and looking for the woman of my dreams. Even more so today than back then, meeting people through the internet has become fairly normal. So I decided to sign up for a 30 day membership on match.com. I figured, if I didn’t find what I was looking for by 30 days, then it wasn’t gonna work.
After a couple failed dates, I came across a lovely strawberry blonde that had a 97% match score. I decided to send her a message. I had noticed in her profile that a plus was making her laugh. So I sent a well thought, message that I wish I had saved but did not. When you are trying to find someone like this online its a bit like writing a resume. It can’t be too long or she might not even take the time to read it. It can’t be too short because it won’t get the point across. So I spent a good amount of time writing out the best message I could. I remember at the very end of my message writing “and I bet I can make you laugh”. A few days later, Erin replied. Now I wish I had saved her reply as well and even though I did not I can remember it exactly, “how much you wanna bet?”. That was it. That was her whole message. Her strategy was clearly different from mine but it worked.
We decided to go out for a beer and that turned into a few beers and dinner at European Street. Needless to say that we clicked right away and talked all through dinner and drinks. This date turned into a 2nd date at a putt-putt course where we shared our first kiss (she turned me down for a kiss on our first date). I also would like to mention that this is no longer a putt-putt course. So now every time I drive past it, I remember we had our first kiss, right there, in a minute clinic parking lot. Things got serious when my match account auto renewed right after our 2nd date before I had gotten Erin’s phone number. I was out $50 because I had not asked her for her phone number yet and was still using the site to contact her. I later found out that she had used a groupon and gotten her 30 day membership for half price, meanwhile I had paid full price, twice. Then things really got serious when Erin was invited to a friends’ wedding to be a bridesmaid and she asked me to go as her date. I cleverly used this as a way to officially promote myself to “boyfriend” status. I told her if we decided to make it official, we would avoid the awkward introductions to everyone. Instead of “this is my friend Jason” and making people wonder just how good of friends that we are, we can just go straight to the intro as boyfriend and skip the questions. Somehow that worked.
This all eventually led to me decided that yes, she was the woman I wanted to marry and that, no, I had no doubts. So I bought a ring and was trying to figure out how to find the time to ask her father for permission to marry her. We planned a trip to visit her parents in Orlando for Christmas and my goal the whole weekend was to somehow be alone with Tim (Erin’s father) and ask him this very important question. We walked in the door, Erin’s Mom was in the shower, Tim was in his record room listening to records, and Erin volunteered to go pick up subs for dinner. Then she walked out. Somehow the opportunity I was hoping would happen before the end of the weekend had happened, immediately. I went into Tim’s record room and knew I had very limited time to do this so, I dove in head first. I told him I need to ask him something and he said something along lines of “sure thing, go ahead”. I told him that I loved Erin very much, she was the love of my life, and that I would like his permission to ask her to marry me. I did not know that at that moment Tim was using a razor blade to cut out a headshot of a photo to put inside a necklace for Elizabeth (Erin’s Mom). He looked at me and said “I guess I should put this knife down huh?”. After a short conversation he gave me his blessing and then I told him that I had the ring and I was going to ask her before we went out to see the family so we could tell everyone (was very, very confident I was getting a yes). So Tim and I came up with a plan together at that point because there was no way any master plan of mine was going to work as well as this one had. So he got Elizabeth out of the house and left Erin and I alone for about an hour before all the family visiting was going to start.
So there I was, sitting on the living room floor, Pirates of the Caribbean on in the background, ring hidden next to me, limited time to make this happen. Erin had taken a shower so I thought all of this was great timing and that she would be all dressed up, makeup on, ready for a proposal. Then out walks Erin, no makeup, wearing these very comfortable pink sweat pants, carrying a basket full of nail polish because she hadn’t decided what color to paint her nails yet. I think its about time I mention that I like to video tape stuff if I think there is a good reaction coming. So all of this is on video to this day. Those pink sweatpants are still around too. So I was like, this is it, it’s gotta happen right now, pink sweatpants and all. So I asked her and she immediately welled up with tears (I did too) and she said yes! Then we called her Mom to tell her the news and I still remember to this day how that went. Elizabeth answered the phone and said “what do you want I’m on the phone with Sarah (Erin’s sister)?” Erin replied with “Um, I just got engaged.” Then we just heard “What!?” Followed by “Did you know? (to Tim)”. Then she said “Hold on I gotta hang up on Sarah!”. The rest of that night was spent calling just about anyone we could think of to tell them the great news.
After almost a year of being engaged we got married on November 15, 2015. It was a fairy tale marriage just like Erin and I had imagined. We got married at the same venue (Highland Manor) she had been a bridesmaid at, telling everyone I was her boyfriend for the first time. We then had an amazing Honeymoon in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. The past few years have been so wonderful and amazing, I can’t put it into a blog post. We already had one dog (Jewels – Lab), we adopted another one (Maize – Golden Retriever), we sold my old house, we bought our first house, and then we had little Wesley on November 7th, 2018. We hope that you read on and enjoy our life adventures that we will be sharing. This is how we got here and we can’t wait to see what the future has in store for us. Hopefully, neither can you.
house parsons 