As told by Christine...

We both attended Kinnick High School overseas in Japan since my dad was in the military and his parents worked for the government. Although I can't exactly pinpoint our first encounter since high school has been so long, our first initial interaction probably occurred by his locker during the beginning of junior year. Rumors were going around that my friend was going to prom with Scott. Being the curious person, I wanted to know more about this new person that was suddenly invited to our circle of friends. I didn't really know Scott at the time because I was busy in my own little social world and I was dating someone at the time, but my first impressions of Scott was that he was shy, ambitious, and smart. Little did I know he was going to play an instrumental part of my life :)

Call it fate, but three very pivotal and coincidental moments occurred over the course of our high school experience:

I dropped my AP History class my junior year and transferred to a regular History class (Mr. Ettl's). I can vividly remember walking from the counselor's office to Mr. Ettl's class. I was greeted in the middle of class time with staring faces by my new teacher, Mr. Ettl. The class was full and the only seat that was vacant was Scott's seat. Mr. Ettl tells me that Scott was away for a soccer tournament and would not be back for a week. He tells me to take his seat for that day.

Then, during senior year, I was part of the class council with my senior class. By then, my relationship with Scott has been limited to the "best friend" status. Sometimes during lunch when I was so busy with my student and class council meetings, Scott would stop by the classroom where we held our meetings and buy me lunch. I remember, Marc, our class president asked me what the status of our relationship was. I told him it was nothing and shrugged it off. The funny thing that I can still remember was Marc telling me that we can be in denial about our relationship status, but that he wanted me to remember that "friends do become lovers."

Finally, after senior year, I found out that Scott got accepted to University of California Irvine, while my dad bought his retirement home in San Marcos, California and our family was going to start our lives here. I also found out that Scott's family lived in San Diego, which is literally 15-20 minutes where I live. While living in San Diego, I had no intention of getting into any kind of relationship. I was focused and determined to obtain my bachelor's degree and establish my career as a counselor.

So, it makes you wonder how we ended up together. It was bound to happen. We both lived near each other. Our schools were semi close to each other. Plus, his parents knew us. Our plane ride home from Maryland during the Summer 2002 to visit my best friend, Deplata only solidified our relationship to the next level. It has always been fate that pulled us together after all these years, even closer than ever. I can't believe I'll be marrying my best friend!

As told by Scott...

Well where to begin. Christine & I did in fact first meet during our junior year of high school since she moved to Yokosuka Naval Base from the Zama/Atsugi area. Since it was quite awhile ago I first met her probably in the hallways of Kinnick High School or in Mr. Ettl's History class. In class we worked together on one assignment and for some reason I had a hard time finding the answers to her questions. Normally, people place the answers all in order and make things easy to find. Christine decided to make things more challenging and place questions from different areas in random order.

Senior year we shared a Home Economics course together and sat next to each other. It's kind of funny looking back because now we will have to cook for ourselves and each other, haha. By then, we were pretty good friends and our friendship grew. I didn't really date in high school since I was busy with football, soccer, music, and school. But out of everyone, I considered Christine my closest confidant whenever I needed advice on things or just someone to talk to.

During football season, she wanted to wear my jersey supposedly because she thought it was cool. I was like, "alright, but everyone is going to think we are going out since all the girls did that." So yeah, she wore the jersey to the homecoming game and everyone was asking us what was going on. We both told everyone we were just really good friends, nothing else.

Time flew by and our paths would cross again as we both graduated from high school. I moved to Irvine, California to start my undergraduate program at UC Irvine while Christine and her family moved to San Marcos, California. I showed their family around since they were not as familiar with the area as I was. During this year, Christine had broken up with her then boyfriend of several years so I gave her time and space to think about things.

About a year later, we took a trip to Maryland to visit our dear friend Christine (now one of our maids of honor). For some reason, over the course of the trip, I realized that the person I was looking to be with for the rest of my life was right in front of me the whole time. She is such a special person that I had to ask her out and see what would come of things. My only fear was that she would reject me and our friendship would dissolve. Luckily she accepted and that's how we began our lives together.