Will & Elisabeth

I guess our story starts in 2001 while I was at college in Atlanta, GA. I was studying computer science and had been a pretty big fan of the rock band Skillet for about a year, so I decided to setup a website about the band. The site quickly grew and evolved into a decent size community of Skillet fans.

I was here in Southern California, and had been introduced to Skillet that same year by my best friend. I was aware of the community Will had setup, but didn't really care for the people there. So I got involved with, and later managed, a different Skillet community. Of course Will and I knew who each other were and he helped me on a few technical things, but otherwise we kept to ourselves. Actually, he tended to come off as a bit of an elitist snob.

Oh, come on... you can't be serious.

You did! Some of the other people over there were worse, but you always seemed so cold and distant.

Yeah? Well you seemed to be running a preschool with little kids just running around crazy!

*rolls eyes* Anyway, needless to say we didn't exactly get along. We had two very different communities that attracted very different types of people, and we generally left it at that.

Now by the summer of 2002, I had moved back home to Memphis, Tennessee. I wasn't working that summer so a few friends from the Skillet community and I decided to take a road trip to California. Skillet was playing several shows over a couple of days, so we arranged for a dozen or so of us that knew each other online to all meet up at the shows. There's several folks missing from this picture, but you can see Elisabeth and I kneeling down in front here.

Will was always a bit intimidating to a lot of people, because he ran the big community and knew the band pretty well and all. I didn't really know what to expect when I met him, but I was pretty much ready to not like him much. What I saw though was this skinny guy with firey red hair and moccasins... and I actually couldn't help but like him. Without realizing it, I was falling head over heels.

But then of course he went back home to Memphis. I tried to get to know him a bit, but he wouldn't give me the time of day.

What? When did I blow you off? The fact of the matter is, I thought she was pretty cute. But I was also realistic... we lived almost 2000 miles apart, hardly knew each other, and weren't really in the position to get into a long distance relationship. She was a beautiful girl, but that was it.

About a year later in 2003, the two communities that we were managing merged into one. Will and I worked together a bit to pull that off and then co-managed the new community for a while. By this time though, I had begun working with a different band and ultimately left the Skillet community to go work with them, leaving things to Will. Except for a couple of short emails, we didn't really talk much for the next 2 or 3 years... we had gone our separate ways.

During those next few years I had been going to school and working at the University of Memphis on a project called Shibboleth. In October 2005, I heard that a school in California (USC) was looking for a Shibboleth administrator, so I expressed my interest in the position. My job at UofM was only a part-time position and I had no real ties to Memphis, so I figured I had nothing to lose. About the same time, I was also offered an position at a large university on the east coast.

I got in touch with a couple of friends I had in California just to let them know I was looking at a job out there. I remembered that Elisabeth was in school, so I contacted her to find out where and to see what she had been up to the last couple of years.

I was a little surprised to hear from him but was glad to chat.

The more I read the archives on her website, the more I began to realize that I may have missed out on something years ago. Hoping it wasn't too late, I really began to pursue getting to know her better.

At this point, I'm thinking "What the hell?" He had never once shown an interest in my personal life, and now he wants to hear my life story? I had really fallen for him years ago... when we had an assignment in a Health Science class to bring in a picture of our ideal mate, most of my classmates brought pictures of models or movie stars. I brought in a picture of Will. But then I moved on, and thought that was the end of it.

We kept chatting a bit online for a couple of weeks, and then started calling around Thanksgiving of that year... a good 3-4 hours a night, every night. The job at USC hadn't been a perfect fit, but given where things were headed with Elisabeth, I decided to fly out to California over New Years. It'd give me a good opportunity to spend time with her and talk to the guys at USC again.

Our first official date was that New Year's Eve at Knott's Berry Farm to see Skillet. We commemorated the evening with some photobooth pictures. Before I knew it, he was back on a plane heading home.

Within the first couple of days spent with Elisabeth, I knew I had to be in California. I turned down the east coast job, despite it seemingly being a better career move, and accepted a full time position at USC. Less than a month after I had returned to Memphis, Elisabeth flew out and we spent three days driving back to the west coast.

Let's just say that our new circumstances were certainly not conducive to nurturing a budding romance. I was working full-time in downtown Los Angeles and she had just started full-time at San Diego State University. For the next two years (and still to this day) we only ever saw each other on the weekends.

Will was pretty convinced from the beginning that he was going to marry me. I always knew that could be somewhere in our future, but he seemed over-eager at times. He must have jokingly asked me a hundred times if I would marry him, to which I would always tell him "no". But then in June 2007, we went back to Knott's Berry Farm for some family event with his work. As the day winded down, we decided to find our old photobooth and take another set of pictures like we had on our first date. We did one set, but Will claimed they didn't look very good and he wanted to take another one. It was late in the day and we were both tired, and I really didn't want to do another set. And then he put the money in the machine before we even got situated and started fiddling with his bag, so I was getting pretty annoyed.

She really was upset at me, telling me I shouldn't have put the money in yet. It was a tight squeeze, but I managed to get down on one knee and get the ring out of my bag. I told her that I loved her and asked her to be my wife.

"Are you sure this time?" That's what I asked him... he had asked so many times before, I had to be sure.

yeah, but never before did I have a ring!

Of course I said "yes", and we ended up getting some really cool pictures of the proposal to boot.