Angie and I met online and dated for 2 years. I was a pretty experienced online dater; she was not. She had been married once before, and since then she really had only two long term boyfriends. I thank God her friends convinced her to sign up for a dating app. I snatched her up and swept her off her feet, I was the first and last person that she went on an online date with.
I had the ring for a few days and it was burning a hole in my pocket. I knew I wanted to go out to dinner, but I didn’t want a public engagement. We went to a place called Bar 360 in St. Louis; it’s got 360 degree panoramic views. We were so high up that off in the distance we could see this giant ferris wheel. Angie suggested we go on the ferris wheel after dinner. I was thinking, OK, this has to be it, right?
As we were in line, I started studying the ferris wheel. You get about three rotations before it stops. On our second rotation, I did that move from “Back To The Future” and was like “What is that?!” so she would look away. When she turned back I was down on my knee and I had the ring out.
We just wanted to be married and we always talked about a small wedding. We decided it would be immediate family and the close friends Angie considers family. My parents live in Detroit and my brother lives in Berlin, Germany so we were trying to figure out a date that worked for everyone. We decided on Memorial Day weekend (which is about when we met) and the location was going to be at the park we had our first date at.
But then COVID hit and we realized that it was more than just people being trapped on a cruise ship. We wanted a small wedding, but we didn’t know how small we should go. Once we got into the thick of things and everything started shutting down it made it a little easier on us. Our location was closed and they gave us our deposit back. My brother and my parents couldn’t travel, so my side of the family would not get to attend the wedding in person.
When everyone was hunkered down and doing Zoom happy hours, we thought if we can play Cards Against Humanities on Zoom then why can’t we have a wedding on Zoom.
In the end it turned out quite well, we got married in the park we met. We had an officiant, a photographer, Angie’s best friend, her brother, her father and his girlfriend. My mom, my dad and my brother got to watch the virtual wedding via the phones that were held up by our guests, so they basically got the same view. Once we were pronounced man and wife, my families’ cheers were so loud that it caught the attention of the people walking by. I don’t think they would have even noticed we were getting married if it wasn’t for that.