Christi Smith & Jon Singleton

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Bride to be: Christi Smith
Groom to be: Jon Singleton

Wedding date: April 12, 2012

Christi writes:

“It sounds cliche' but it's true: Jon and I were each other's first loves and will be each other's last.

We met in elementary school and fell in love in the sixth grade. We were inseparable for two years and then I moved away. In the time before Internet and Facebook and e-mail and text messages (or "The Dark Ages," according to my kids), it wasn't so easy to stay in touch with your puppy love and we had to work hard at it. We wrote letters, long-hand, and mailed them -- via the post office!!! -- to each other; we called long distance and only talked for ten minutes so we didn't make our parents made with huge bills; and we spent a few fleeting moments together over the next several years when I was able to make it back to my home town to visit family. Those memories are the foundation of our life together.

Sadly, we lost touch, grew up, got married (to other people), had kids, moved on. But we never forgot one another. Luckily for us, the Internet did get invented and e-mail connected people who were miles and worlds apart in mere seconds rather than the days and weeks of regular mail. One fateful day, I typed Jon's mom's name into the oracle we all know as Google and got a hit, a hit that included an e-mail address. I contacted her and told her who I was, she passed that information along to her son, and well, the rest is history.

We've been reunited as friends for almost eight years and we've been together, in love, since May of 2009. Although it was always a foregone conclusion that we would get married one day, we never got around to making it official, calling it an engagement, liking and putting a ring on it, if you will. We've been busy, you know, working, raising our respective children, creating a home, living our life together. Then, two days after Christmas, tragedy touched our lives directly when the father of my two older children unexpectedly died, leaving my son and daughter heartbroken and the rest of us looking at our lives and realizing that we might not always have tomorrow to do the things which are important to us, to sanctify love, to honor commitments, to revisit the promises of childhood and make them the reality of our lives.

On New Year's Eve 2011, standing in our driveway, our family sleeping inside the house, my first and only true love wrapped his arms around me and began an unrehearsed preamble about exquisite plans and beautiful backdrops, perfect rings and sunny destinations, and how none of those things were coming together quickly enough for him, and with that, he asked me to be his wife and share the rest of our lives together. I paused for a moment, not even realizing that that's where he was going when he'd began to speak and needing a moment to catch up, and when it finally dawned on me what had just happened, I said the only thing I could in that moment: Of course I will marry you.

Being engaged is a whole new experience from simply living together and being a family. We've not yet decided how we will celebrate our impending nuptials or where, but we know it won't be a long engagement: Life is too short and we've already been in love for 25 years.”