Great stories, everyone!
Hm. I was in college, and I'd been going out with a guy from high school, though things weren't working out especially well. (I was kind of staying with him because I really liked his family.) Meanwhile, I spent my Friday evenings at the roleplaying and strategy games club at the university. I became good friends with several guys there, and in an attempt to help along my existing relationship, one of them sent me flowers anonymously (to make the current boyfriend jealous). That plan had unexpected side-effects-- existing bf didn't pick up on the hint very well and I ended up splitting up with him, and shortly thereafter the guy who had sent me flowers decided to stop chasing the girl who was more or less ignoring him... well, one thing led to another, as you might imagine.
About a year and a half later, we eloped. We'd been living together for about a year, and by then I was working at the university. We already pretty much
felt married, but if we
were married, he'd get health insurance and half-price classes, but we needed to be married before a particular date if he was going to take classes that fall. We decided we didn't really have time to plan a wedding, so we got married and didn't tell anyone. Well, mostly anyone. My brother was the bridesmaid and a friend named Sue was the best man, but they didn't tell. (My brother may have been too drunk to remember to tell anyone. That was a bad year for him.) I tell my mom pretty much everything, but she didn't tell. But we did tell the woman who owned the park our mobile home was in, and she told her daughter, and the daughter worked at the bank my husband's brother did his banking at... and the next thing we knew, we got a call from my husband's parents.
It was pretty funny. We were having a roleplaying game at our house, with a bunch of people who didn't know we were married (and Sue, who did). I answered the phone, and it was my husband's mother, who asked to speak with him. Then we were all treated to his half of the conversation while he explained things. I called my dad later that day. (He was surprisingly calm. Apparently all the problems my kid brother had been having had softened him up a bit. My eccentricities were pretty small potatoes by comparison.)
A year later we had the wedding, on our first anniversary. The invitations read "Please dress comfortably for lawn games and other festivities." My brother, who had cleaned up by then, played Paul Stukie's "Wedding Song" and we all sang it together. I had made my dress (I got some pretty off-white raw silk at the fabric store I was working for at the time on discount), and my husband wore nice pants and a shirt for the very short ceremony performed by the same Justice of the Peace who'd married us the year before; we changed to comfy clothes immediately afterward. Then we all exchanged hugs, enjoyed cold cuts and fruit salad and a flat spice cake with a gingerbread bride and groom, and played badminton and frisbee (including someone inevitably getting a frisbee stuck on the roof of the church community hall we had rented).
Afterward, we went out for Chinese food with as many friends as wanted to come along. The entire wedding cost much less than $1000.
That was 20 years ago. We adopted two beautiful girls from China (by choice), both "school age" at the time of the adoptions, and that has been an enormous challenge, but also rewarding.
Oh, and we both read, voraciously.
(But he doesn't think much of ebook readers, though he will read quite long passages on the computer.)