Lindsay and Matt

Posted Monday, August 11, 2008 2:05 PM

Marrying My Best Friend

First, let me start off by saying that I’m marrying my best friend. I know that’s what lots of girls say, but for me it’s true. We’ve been friends for 24 years. Our dads were best friends growing up, bought houses near one another when they got married, and had kids at relatively the same time. Matt and I are two and a half months apart, and our younger brothers are three weeks apart. Our families have always been close. We went to rival high schools so we didn’t hang out much then but were always there for one another. We’ve been through every major milestone in life together. We got our driver’s licenses pretty much at the same time. We were at each other’s high school graduations, he attended my college graduation, and I’ll be going to his college graduation in August.
 
Worth Every Bump in the Long Road

We lost touch after high school. He joined the Air National Guard and was deployed to Germany for 18 months. On his return from Germany, he called me and wanted to take me to dinner for my birthday. That’s where it all began -- we’ve been together ever since. It’s been a tough road. We’ve survived another deployment, except this one was a bit scarier because he was stationed right outside Iraq. That was two and a half years ago.
 
The Proposal

The proposal was amazing. We went to California to visit a buddy of Matt’s who was stationed in the desert with him. On the last day of our trip, we went to San Francisco to see the city. We walked to this amazing tower called Coit Tower. He was planning to propose then, but a tour bus pulled up and so he decided not to because there would be too many people. So we walked back down and grabbed a bite to eat, which was difficult since nobody wanted to eat; he and his friend were focused on him proposing. We ate and they decided to go back to the tower to see what it looked like while the sun was setting. Well, we went back up, and it wasn’t easy because it was about a thousand steps! So we got up there and stood on this ledge that overlooked all of downtown San Francisco. It was beautiful. He started saying all this sweet stuff, and I was just like, “Awww, I love you too honey!” Then he dropped down on one knee and asked me to marry him! My first response was to hit him and say, “Shut up!” I was thrilled and it took me a minute to answer because I just kept asking him if he was serious!
 
We got lucky and took some really great pictures of the proposal. It’s truly the most amazing thing to be able to say I’m marrying my best friend and childhood friend!