Our Story
Our Story
Our story started in July 1999,
to be exact on July 10th.
We both were bored and we ended
up in a Yahoo chat room. I caught Doris's eye when i told i was from Holland.
Now you will be wondering why Doris
had this special interest in Holland.
Well when she graduated in 1974
from high school, her parents graduation gift was a trip to Holland where
she went to visit her pen pal Anneke, who lived in Groningen.
Doris stayed there for a whole
month and she visited several places in Holland. So from this moment on
she fell in love with Holland and she was hoping to be back there one day.
So we started a nice chat on that
evening and Doris decided to send me her picture. She wanted to know if
i did have one from myself too, but i didn't have one at that moment.
The next morning i already went
to my friends house to have one scanned and i did send it right away to
her when i came home.
The same night we meet again online,
this wasn't a coincidence because we did find out how to find each other
again. From this moment on we talked every single night, wrote emails and
cards.
Shortly after that my birthday
came up (August 3rd) and to my big surprise i found an envelope in my mail
with alot of pictures from Doris and a birthday card.
Around the same time we came to
the conclusion we wanted to meet in person, and since i didn't have any
vacation yet i booked a flight to the USA.
August 20th was a big day for us.
Doris, her niece Morgan and her boyfriend Zachary were waiting for me at
Allentown International Airport (ABE) where i arrived with some delayment.
This made Doris very nervous but finally the Dutch giant was there, a little
tired but very happy to meet each other.
I never expected to see her right
after the gate, so you can imagine how surprised i was when i heard a scream
and when someone jumped around my neck. But it was a nice surprise.
We did spend 10 wonderful days together
in which Doris showed me the area in which she lived (Hellertown, Pennsylvania),
and i did meet her family, except her youngest sister Dana and her daughter
Christa, and her coworkers.
We decided that we did want to
meet again because we knew we loved each other, and before i had to go
back home we already were making plans for a new meeting.
Since Doris always took her vacation
for the Christmas holidays we decided to meet again in December,
but then in Holland.
So after a hard good-bye when i
left we had something to look forward to, and we needed that cause we knew
it was going to be hard to be apart.
The time in between we filled up
with chatting and making phone calls again and finally we did meet again
on December 20th. Then Doris came over for two weeks and we could spend
Christmas an New Years
together. The days in between we
used to visit different parts of Holland like Amsterdam, Madurodam (this
is a miniature city), Heusden (that's a real nice old small city) and some
other places.
She got to meet my family on my
brothers 50th anniversary. He had a party in a small bar and all of my
brothers and sisters were there and were anxious to meet their brothers
new girlfriend.
But time flew and with alot of
good memories and pictures Doris had to go back home again, but we already
knew that it wasn't gonna be for a long time because we took some important
decisions.
The most important thing was that
Doris and I wanted to live together, we already talked a little about a
wedding but first we wanted to live together to see how things worked out.
March 2, 2000, two days before her
birthday, she arrived at Schiphol again and this time to stay forever.
This was one of the greatest moments
of our lives. Finally we could be together forever. Our dream came true.
It took some time to get all the
paperwork done, but after she got her residence permit, Dutch driver license
and everything, we could start to think about our future plans.
After a year of living together
and of getting to know each other better and better we decided to get married
and started to make the plans for it.
July 6th 2001 was the date we planned,
this was the closest day to the day we met online.
Wednesday around midnight we had
a fire at our backyard where someone did put the bushes on fire and the
fire department had to come over to put out the fire. So we had a big mess
just before our wedding day, but with the help from our neighbors and some
good friends everything was cleaned up in time. We didn't let this fire
ruin our wedding day.
Our wedding day was the best moment
for the two of us, and we are still very happy and in love together.
To see some of our wedding pictures,
just click on the link below.