Jamie Watanabe

Ryan and I first met during my junior year of college when I started working at a local restaurant in Champaign called Pickles. In the first two months of knowing each other, we had a few brief conversations, but dating never crossed our minds. Then before I knew it, he moved to Chicago for an internship at WGN, and I figured the chances of me seeing him again were very slim.

At some point during the beginning of the second semester of my junior year, I was having a really bad day, and I made several comments about it on Facebook. Ryan happened to notice them and sent me a nice, comforting message. I was surprised to hear from him but also happy to know he hadn’t forgotten about me. After that, our Facebook conversations became more and more frequent, and eventually we made plans to hang out when his internship was over.

For our first date, we went out to dinner at T.G.I. Fridays. It was raining that night, and I was carrying an umbrella. As we were walking to the door, a strong gust of wind blew my umbrella inside out. I thought, oh great, this is the first impression Ryan gets of me? Fortunately, he thought it was cute and funny and still wanted to go on a second date.

On our one year anniversary, we went out to a nice restaurant for dinner. Toward the end of our meal, Ryan kept looking at his watch and suggested we skip dessert. So we left the restaurant and headed back to his apartment. When we got to his door, he unlocked it and stood back to let me in first. I stepped into the darkness and was about to reach for the light switch when I noticed that the room was filled with candles. My immediate thought was that his roommate had done something romantic for his girlfriend. When I turned around to ask Ryan what was going on, he was already down on one knee. After he proposed and I said yes, I was able to take in my surroundings. There were Gerber Daisy petals (which was the first flower he had ever given me) covering the floor, a slide show of pictures of us playing on the TV, music playing in the background, and a dozen roses sitting on the table. Even in the dark, everything was so beautiful and perfect! It turns out that Ryan had given the flowers, candles, photos and music to his roommate, who had decorated the apartment while we were out. Once I had finally calmed down from all the excitement, we both sat down and started text messaging our friends and family to let them know we were engaged!

We are getting married at the Gaslite Manor in Aurora on June 13, 2009. We’ve done a lot of the planning already, but there is still plenty to do in the next seven months. Thank you Chicago Style Weddings and House of Brides for helping out with a huge part of it. I love my dress!

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