Wedding Date on Nov 11, 2017

Jessica's Side: Let me tell you about my best friend. When I first met Tripp during my young years of college, I was instantly attracted to his humor, and I guess he fancied something about me too. Whatever it was, we had this connection. And no, it wasn't the madly in love connection you are all thinking. You see, I was dating a very close friend of his at the time. Through that, Tripp and I formed the most perfect friendship I can think of and because of the dating his friend thing, we were together almost every weekend. As the years grew, the deeper our friendship became. He was my go to, and he cared for me the way a sibling would. We would laugh on his couch for hours over 3am breakfast cook-offs and close down Fellini's pizza while having your random Tuesday night heart-to-heart. We enjoyed our most favorite hobby together: driving around the city and dancing to tunes for hours on end. I watched him date while also telling all my girlfriends "Tripp is a flawless human. One of you needs to go after him." Little did I know. Fast forward five years, I moved back to Atlanta from South Florida, and I was single for the first time since the two of us had met. What I didn't know is how close Tripp and I had yet to become. 3am breakfast cook-offs turned into weekend long camping trips, pizza nights turned into sleepovers after laughing over too many bottles of wine, and our favorite hobby turned into monthly concert outings. We watched each other date and he was always the first to hear about how "I was so bored by that guy," and "who does that on a date?" Funny thing is, I was comparing all of these dates to how he treated me. As you could guess by now, Tripp and I share the same group of friends. They were smarter than us at the time. My girlfriends were constantly preaching "you two flirt more than anyone we know," while I fought back "we're just friends." But friends always know best, huh? However, a romance was definitely growing, but there was no way I was going to ever admit it, given the circumstances. Plus who knew if he felt it back? I should've known. His feelings for me became apparent (but not known) during a fall camping trip up in the remote North Georgia Mountains. Our friends and us decided to go for a 1am hike to the old cemetery. Three miles in we noticed my foot was bleeding, and we told our friends to go ahead of us. Tripp picked me up and carried me all the way back to the campsite to take care of me. We stayed up eating Cheez-Its and having one of our best conversations. In that moment, I realized that Tripp and I felt the same; although, the words were still not spoken. Later that month, we all went to see Passion Pit together. One too many drinks in, and I couldn't keep my paws off of Tripp. He still laughs at how obvious I was that night. As usual, the night ended with just the two of us left at my house. Except tonight was different. Mid-conversation, Tripp looked at me and said "What are we doing?" I was completly caught off guard, and before I could answer, he was kissing me. The rest is history.