As told by the Bride:

After a long day at work at my new job, my friend Olga (with whom I had worked at Seville Quarter) and I had agreed to meet up at O’Charley’s in Pensacola for some happy hour margaritas. She had been shopping with Jason, whom she knew through our Seville Quarter coworker, Roger (a fine DJ!). They were at Hobby Lobby, an enormous craft store that has plenty of household décor, shopping for some decorations for Jason’s new house. She suggested I meet them both at Hobby Lobby first, and then we'd head to O’Charley’s for drinks.

After wandering the many aisles of Hobby Lobby for a few minutes, I finally found them. My first thought when I saw Jason was, “Oh, my gosh; he’s HOT!  And I look awful!” (I was totally dressed like the nerd that I am; leave it to me!)  He found all the random stuff he needed for his house, with help from me and Olga.  Of course, as it turns out, I was unknowingly decorating the house I’d soon be living in!  (It's a good thing I wasn't being a smart-alec that day; I'm sure I could have convinced him to buy the ugliest stuff... and now I'd be looking at it every. single. day.)

We went for drinks afterwards, where Jason asked Olga again what my name was (bad memory!) while I was in the ladies' room (where I was desperately trying to figure out how to make myself look less like a nerd in those clothes. No, seriously -- it was pretty bad).  He’d written it down on his Hobby Lobby receipt – nearly a year later, he showed me the receipt, which he had sentimentally kept all that time (it’s now in a scrapbook). 

Two weeks later, I found myself looking for a temporary place to live while waiting to move into the house I’d rented in Mobile, closer to where I work.  Olga, who’d originally agreed to let me stay in her guest bedroom, hadn’t yet gotten around to cleaning it out and prepping it for a guest (I still say she did this on purpose, haha!), which meant that I needed to find an alternative place to stay for a few weeks.  We met up at her place and headed for margaritas at the Oar House; we dolove our margaritas down here!  She asked me, “Do you remember that guy Jason from Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago? He lives just up the street from me; wanna go see how his house looks with all that stuff he bought?”  I said yes, so she called him and said “we” were on our way.  Jason thought “we” meant Olga and her boyfriend, and was surprised when Olga and I pulled up in his driveway.

He was washing his motorcycle, and as we pulled into the driveway, I told Olga, “He’s hot!”

Olga replied, “He said he likes you,” and got out of my car, leaving me swooning and wanting to talk more about it, to deconstruct when, where and how, exactly, he had told her; what the wind direction was at the moment he'd said it; at what time of day he'd told her; what the intonation was in his voice; what he was wearing at the time; etc. – wanting to analyze the whole sentence from every possible angle, like any responsible woman would.

Obviously. ;)

We toured his sparsely-furnished (but well-decorated!) home, and headed out to the Oar House, where Olga suggested that I stay in one of Jason’s empty guest bedrooms while awaiting the move-in date on my house in Mobile.  He agreed; I accepted; and the very next night, I moved in. 

It was Independence Day weekend, and we’d both wound up with 5 days off; Jason and I were inseparable the whole time. We spent the entire weekend with Olga and her boyfriend on the beach and in the bayou, jetskiing and lounging and loving life, and were instantly as close and comfortable as lifelong best friends. 

For the next two weeks, Jason kept suggesting I stay with him in Pensacola (despite my long daily commute – appx 90 minutes each way! -- to Mobile), but I was determined that I would move out on my own.  All the while, though, I’d wished I could stay with Jason, with whom I was definitely “in like.” (We were both too chicken to use the other L-word.)  When we learned, the day before I was supposed to move, that the house I was renting in Mobile was, in fact, infested with fleas, I cancelled my lease and decided to take Jason up on his offer to stay with him (I was secretly relieved!).

And now, almost three years later, we will be married, right here in the town where we met and fell in love.