When we meet the ones who get us, it is amazing how we just know it is meant to be.

 

That is how I felt when I met Katie. Katie, she gets me. As a fellow teacher of ninth grade English, she would know and understand my “Romeo and Juliet” jokes. She loves a little exchange of literary ideas, and she knows what it’s like to be thought of as crazy for loving days with those fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds (but let’s face it: We are a little out there…in the best way possible).

 

But this isn’t the narrative of two nerdy English girls who giggled while the engineer amongst them probable wondered what was wrong with these two; this is Katie and Michael’s story, whose plot that will take us to an August wedding and then to a happily ever after.

 

Katie knew the minute she saw Michael that she was going to marry him. He was a Minneapolis-born Marine stationed in North Carolina, she was the hometown teacher who fell so hard for her man that she was willing to leave the sun and fun for the snow and the cold that makes the Midwest a special kind of home

 

This winter is Katie’s first January in Minnesota, and our Sunday session provided the bone-chilling cold that a Minnesota winter promises. Bundled in their Carhartts and parkas, these two made the most of every posed (and improved) snuggle along Riverside Parkway. Katie was as tough as a someone who has lived their whole life here along the Mississippi, and that these wicked wind chills right off the cold water were not a new experience.

 

It is exciting to think of all the new experiences that will come to Katie and Michael as they embark on this new adventure in their lives.  

 

Here are just a few of the moments that make the rising action of their love story…