How Billy and Angela got together

Last time, on Angela's Wedding Tracker...
Billy and Angela are clearly great friends, who share a love of theatre and nerdy things. But with both of them interested in other people, how will true love bloom?

I think that Billy's and my relationship took a turn for more serious territory right before we split up for our first Christmas break from college (this will become a running theme in our relationship; just watch).

A few days before the end of the semester, we were invited to go watch one of our friends sing at a Christmas service in a church "near Detroit." What we didn't realize was that to this dear friend, "near Detroit" meant Windsor, Canada. And we didn't have any sort of documentation that you need in order to go to Canada.

You find out who your true friends are when you are detained by customs because you're trying to cross the US/Canada border to attend church without proper ID.

The Canadians were super nice and actually didn't "detain" us for too long. They searched the car, didn't find anything suspicious, so they let us go on our merry way, warning us that we probably wouldn't be able to get back into the US without our birth certificates or passports.

So Billy and I bonded at the McDonald's that's right across from the bridge to Canada (Wikipedia tells me it's the Ambassador Bridge, but all of the highway signs on I-94 around here simply say Bridge to Canada. It's kind of imposing, actually). And after several frantic calls to our parents, we were urged to at least try to get back into the country.

So we did. And lo and behold, they let us! It was a very happy day for us. We were very giddy on the way back to school (in between being pissed off at our friend who had led us astray). While Billy and I had been hanging out for months, for the most part it was in a group. This was really the first time just the two of us had done anything together.

And then two days later we had to leave each other for three weeks. It sucked for both of us, though I simply thought it was because Billy was really cool and fun and of course I missed being stuck at home without any of my college friends!

Actually, my friends, this was when Angela began her slow descent into terror. Because it didn't take long after we got back to school after the long break that I didn't just like Billy. I liked Billy. A boy. A guy. A man.

That didn't sit to well with my self-identifying-lesbian self. For the past two years I had identified myself as a lesbian. I had absolutely no interest in guys and lots of interest in women. It had only been the summer before entering school that I had ever registered being attracted to a guy in any sense, and that was after seeing Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

So for awhile after returning to school, I was a little uncomfortable, but got over my fears quickly. I mean, if I was going to have a crush on a guy, Billy was a pretty safe choice, because there wasn't anything I could do about it. He had been dating the same girl for almost four years! I couldn't touch a relationship like that.

Until Billy dumped his girlfriend. Then I went "oh crap!" and into full-on panic mode for awhile. What was I supposed to do! I'd never had a crush on someone who could maybe-possibly reciprocate those feelings! Actually, who am I kidding, I was convinced Billy would never reciprocate my feelings. Not even after we spent lots of time alone together (we had a class together! We had to study!), I joined the forensics team (I had been planning to join during the second semester since the beginning, even before I knew Billy!), and we did silly things like have staring contests in the forensics room in front of all our friends, and other friends made comments to us about being able to "cut the sexual tension with a biscuit."

We have weird friends.

But eventually, I began to figure out that maybe Billy liked me in the same way I liked him. Because we were friends (and I was trying to drop anvil-sized hints), I had told him that I thought I was bisexual. So he offered to take me on a "practice date" so I would know how to handle myself on a date with a guy, whoever he ended up being.

We went to Panera Bread. Very romantic, I know.

After the practice date, we went to a forensics dinner party where we flirted like mad. After the party he came back to my dorm, ostensibly because he had left one of his books up there earlier in the day. Instead we started talking.

And talking.

And talking.

And eventually the topic of the mystery guy I liked came up. And after that I finally confessed that it was him I liked.

Luckily, he felt the same way!

My stomach was absolutely filled with butterflies as we went out on our first official date to Denny's, somewhere around 3 in the morning on Saturday, February 21st. I ordered a salad and a drink (Sprite with Grenadine) that I could barely touch because I was so effing nervous. I had never been on a real date before, with a woman or a man, so I was freaking out so much I'd had troubling buckling my shoes before we left my dorm, let alone choking down a salad.

Remember how I said Billy and I have excellent timing? Here's where it comes back into play: mere hours after the end of our first date, we had to split up because it was spring break and the dorms were closing. So just hours after I had made the most agonizing decision of my life, to date this perfect, awesome and amazing guy, I had to leave him for a whole week!

The universe has a cruel sense of irony.

Obligatory Introduction Post!

Welcome to my latest blog on the world wide web! (Do we still use that term anymore? Or am I dating myself?)

This blog is dedicated to keeping track of all of my wedding planning thoughts and do-ings. I've been posting about them on my personal blog, but I have a lot of people on my friend's list there that aren't necessarily interested in the finer details of wedding planning. And I also post a lot of non-wedding related things there that would hold no interest for the wedding-blog related world, so I figured it was time to start yet another blog (this is my...seventh blog since I started blogging 9 or 10 years ago. I've been doing this since before it was cool!)

About me: I'm 23 years old, originally from a small, conservative city in Michigan but currently living in a college town on the other side of the state. For a few more weeks, anyway. Then I'm moving out to the Big Apple, where my fiance and I hope to start our grown up careers! He wants to work in theatre or television, while I'm currently trying to break into publishing while debating whether I should go back to school to get a master's degree in...something.

About us: The "us," of course, being my fiance and I. Billy and I met the very first weekend of our freshmen year at college. We were auditioning for the school's fall shows. I was sitting in a corner with a few other freshmen girls as we tried to figure out the audition form. Billy's best friend, Chris, apparently knew some of those girls, and he dragged Billy along to talk to us.

While it was Chris who knew the other girls, he, Billy and I ended up doing most of the talking. The three of us bonded over having done some of the same (crappy) shows in high school and eventually decided that the three of us should go get dinner at the school's food court, since none of us were due to be called in for our audition for awhile.

So we talked, we laughed, we ate bad pizza. When we went back to the theatre, they were making the final call for me to get my butt in there and audition. I freaked out and ran in, and didn't see Billy and Chris for the rest of the night.

There's nothing truly romantic about this meeting. Some women meet their future husband's for the first time and declare that evening that they will marry that man some day. Me? When I went home to do my obligatory blog post, I could hardly even remember Billy's name. (I totally got it right in the blog entry, but I was very hesitant about it and wasn't sure if I got it right. Billy has never let me forget this!)

Billy and I were both cast in the same show, but Chris had obligations to other extra-curricular activities so he didn't make the cut.

Billy and I were essentially the only two people in the show that didn't already have a built in group of friends. Everyone else was either an upper class men, a clearly tight-knit group, or they were a freshmen from the Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor area and had known each other since diapers. I was the only person from my side of the state at the school, and Billy really only had Chris as a friend there. So Billy and I hit it off immediately - strictly as friends! He'd been dating someone since freshmen year of high school, and I was looking for a girlfriend at the time. But Billy was fun and charming and played role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Vampire: the Masquerade.

A man after my own heart. Together with Chris and a few of our other new friends we set up a group that played various role playing games loooooooooooong into the night on Thursdays after play rehearsals, often not finishing the games until after dawn on Friday morning (all of us had lucked out on not having any Friday classes).

But for the longest time, that's where it stayed: just friends. He was in his long-distance relationship with his (rather jealous) girlfriend and was active in forensics with Chris and our other friends. I had plays and school. We had fun together, but really, dating was pretty far from my mind.

Until...

Next up: how Billy and I drove all of our friends CRAZY by not acknowledging how crazy we were for each other!