Xander: The running joke is that our first date was like our third, and the second was like our fifth. An hour after meeting, we had covered all the no-nos: exes, religion, and politics. She loved to talk, and she was just so interesting! I could listen to her talk all day...
Dunja: We met through an online dating app, but we didn't behave the way most people do on those sites - we didn't become flirty pen pals for months, but instead exchanged five messages that were essentially "hey, you seem cool, when can you meet up?" and then picked a night that week to meet for drinks. He was smart and curious, had fascinating thoughts about philosophy and just about every other topic; and he actually listened to the things I said (and had great questions!). Oh and he was very cute. ;)
X: We actually ended up moving in together way before we meant to. I was being kicked out of my cushy single, and we decided I'd move in after only four months. Neither of us had lived with a partner before, and we made a deal that if it wasn't working out, I wouldn't find all my stuff (and my bird) on the front step one day.
D: Technically, we had the first "moving in" conversation after only 2 1/2 months. We were both very rational and logical about the decision, and we decided that we'd move in as roommates and keep dating, and if it wasn't working for some reason (he has a bird, I have a cat!), we'd find him a new place to live and keep dating. We actually said "I love you" to each other for the first time after I handed him a key to the apartment (almost exactly 4 months after we met), and then we never had another conversation about the living situation. It was just very clear that everything was working.
Dunja: We laugh together. Every day. All the time. We actively seek out different ways to make each other giggle - whether it's puns or jokes, or matching wits, or tickling, or goofy dancing. He's usually the one making me laugh, so it brings me immense joy when he laughs at something I've said. Especially if it's a high-brow joke or a play on words. Not gonna lie though - I'm not above slumming it with a low-brow joke for a win. ;)
Xander: She has a way of playing with her voice in a really exaggerated, dramatic way. If she wants to make me laugh, it's like pushing a button. For me at least, love isn't much without laughter, and this girl knows how to make me laugh and laugh.
D: He has a way of making a joke that references ancient history or philosophy that is so clever without being even a little pretentious. He is wicked smart. And well-read. His wordplay is next-level. And I know that there will never be a dull moment in our lives because he is just the most curious and interesting person that I've ever met. When I'm not laughing, I am marveling at how lucky I am to have met someone who is so fascinating.
X: It's funny how both of our senses of humor have evolved over the last few years since meeting each other. I had a big book of dirty jokes as a teenager, so that should explain a lot. But she challenges me to be classier and cleverer about it, and her jokes have definitely gotten dirtier. I think I'm a bad influence!
Xander: I actually met Dunja's mom right before I moved in... with both of them. Her mom was staying for a few weeks, and had known me for all of five minutes before finding out she’d have a new roommate. As you can imagine, this is every new boyfriend’s dream. Obviously, if her mom hated me I was in for a rough few weeks on the couch. Fortunately, there are two things I love more than anything: good food and good stories. And Dragoslava has both of those in spades, and she was thrilled that I was someone willing to eat and listen and argue right alongside her. We met over dinner, and it was like finding a long-lost relative. It was a few months more before I met Dunja’s father Dusan as well, when he opened his home to me the following January.
Dunja: I met his parents (Steve and Claire) for the first time when I joined them for the last few days of their family summer vacation - about 4 months after we met (right as we were moving in together!). They came with Xander to pick me up from the airport, more than an hour from where the vacation home was. I knew right then that they were special people, and all of the many weekends and trips we've enjoyed together since then just keep proving that again and again.
X: I knew my parents would love Dunja, and after they met her they took me aside and told me I’d better keep her. They’re excellent judges of character! We were all together in Denver the weekend I told them I was planning to propose. Mom cried and told me she couldn’t be happier. Dad immediately remembered a ring that had belonged to his mom Betty, and told me I could have it to give to Dunja. The largest diamond went into the engagement ring I used to propose. Afterwards they made a toast that Dunja was already part of their family, and that she could drop by anytime, but please don’t bring me!
D: When the conversation about moving in together got more real, I said to him that it was absolutely vital that he and my mom hit it off, because Mom spent part of the year living with me. So if they didn’t get along, it would have all gone downhill very fast. But I had an instinct they would like each other – I just didn’t know how much! He actually said “I love you” to me for the first time in front of my mom, very naturally and totally by accident. Many nights, I come home from work, and they are entrenched in a conversation about history or politics. And they even went engagement ring shopping together – my mom knew he was going to propose before I did! What's even more remarkable is how well my mom and his parents get along. Xander and I both got really lucky with our in-laws. We try not to rub it in people’s faces too much – but yeah, it's pretty awesome.
Xander: Douglas (MacBird) was my parents' gift for my 14th birthday. When I got him, he wouldn't let me come close without trying to take a piece of my finger. He's become much more tame, but he's still the crotchety bastard he always was. He really thinks he's some kind of tiny, flightless dragon.
Dunja: My teeny cat Bella (6 pounds!) is a tiny little ball of snuggle. She may play a little coy at first with new people, but ultimately, she wants all of your attention and love. And belly rubs. All the time. Naturally, she fell in love with Xander immediately. Douglas....she was a little more suspicious of him. It's not that she hunts him - she doesn't. It's that she's convinced that his tail is DEFINITELY a toy she'd like to play with. (But she also senses that she shouldn't.) Every once in a while when Douglas is on Xander's shoulder on the couch, she'll stand next to him and gingerly reach out her paw....slowly....almost touching....until we shout NE! (that's NO in Serbian - yep, she's a bilingual kitty) Then the paw retracts and her little face says - But I wasn't gonna...
X: Obviously I was terrified that I would come home one day after leaving the door open and find that Sylvester had eaten poor Tweetie bird. Douglas is all hiss and no bite; despite his insistences, he would not be able to win a death match with Bella. Fortunately, the two of them don't pay each other much attention.
D: Douglas...is not a fan of mine. No wait - he hates me with a passion. That's actually more accurate. When I come anywhere near his cage, he hisses at me - like the mighty, terrifying dinosaur he clearly is. When Xander is gone from the house on a trip, he eventually learns to tolerate me, as he understands that I'm his only source for food at that point. But the moment Xander returns, so does his chilly stare. I'm being dramatic of course...he's not actually plotting my demise. Or is he...?
Dunja: Our first conversation about marriage was very late one night on a Boston trip about a year into the relationship. Xander made some funny joke at his own expense about how I'd be apologizing for my embarrassing husband in our old age. And after we finished laughing, there was a pause, and he said - Soooooo I just said husband. And I said - Yes, you did. And he said - I guess we should have a conversation. And I said - Honey, I think we already are. :) We very calmly talked about how we definitely pictured spending the rest of our lives together. And then I said after a pause - But.... I *would* like a proposal, though! And he laughed and nodded. I told him that there was no rush at all, and he could take his time. And I meant it. I really felt this amazing calm knowing he was the one, and there was really no panic to rush anything.
Xander: Dunja had asked for her mom to be involved in finding the right ring. The two of us went ring shopping right around Christmas, and whenever we'd enter a store the salesman would cringe a little and beg us not to ask for something before New Years. I took the diamond ring my parents gave me that once belonged to my grandmother, and we put the biggest, clearest stone in the center of a beautiful, simple setting.
D: When we booked our weekend away for our two-year anniversary at a Santa Barbara bed & breakfast, I truly had no idea what he was planning to do. There was a small part of me that thought that he might propose on our Italy trip the following month. And so in the pictures you see here (which are all from that weekend), I am blissfully happy but also blissfully unaware of what was going to happen on that Saturday afternoon at the chocolate place. If I had known, do you think I would have been wearing that outfit for my engagement photos? ;) But honestly - he could not have picked better. I thought I was as happy as I could be, standing next to the love of my life, eating DELICIOUS chocolate. And then he made me even happier.
X: When I told her that chocolate tasting is an actual thing, her eyes got REAL big. We had talked about going to Santa Barbara for our two-year anniversary, and I knew that's where I would propose. I called Chocolats du CaliBressan ahead of time, and the lady on the phone squealed when I said that I wanted to propose during one of their tours. We drove up on Friday night, and for the next day I had to pretend everything was normal when actually I had butterflies dancing around my stomach. Just before we went in, I slipped the ring to the manager. The tasting itself took forever, which would be a good thing except I kept waiting for that last chocolate. When it came, wrapped in gold foil beneath a truffle, everything happened in slow motion. I got down on one knee and prayed I'd remember the words I had been practicing non-stop for the last week. I actually forgot a few, but she was nice enough not to make me repeat it!
Xander: Preparing for our first big vacation really showed how differently we approached things. She had a packing list, an itinerary, and an outfit for every day. I was ready to pack in grocery bags, and wash my clothes in the sink when they got a little too crispy. She may have overpacked, but about a week and a half into the trip I was the one asking to borrow her shirts! And despite her best efforts, by week two our bag looked like it was packed by drunken gnomes...
Dunja: We had booked our flights 7 months in advance. It was going to be an epic vacation, and we spent months basking in the idea of what our magical Italian vacation would be like. And the remarkable thing is that it lived up to everything we had imagined. We started with a few days in Belgrade, where my mom already was. And she threw us a lovely engagement party with family and friends, and then took us all around like a masterful host/tour guide for the next 2 days. Those few days felt like a week, and Xander got to experience Serbian culture and more importantly, Serbian food. Xander is all about the food :)
X: It’s true – I’m the guy who comes home from a party with a pork chop in his pocket! And boy did we eat… From the artery-clogging pljeskavice (burgers) of Belgrade to the plate-sized pizza we got at Da Michele in Naples, it was a parade of the most amazing dishes I've ever had. Our first Italian stop was Rome, and we were PREPARED. Dunja had the logistics locked down. Every day had an itinerary, with an ambitious plan of where we would go and what we would see. And amazingly enough, we always managed to do something spontaneous. We touristed it up at the Colosseum and the Vatican, where we saw the bones of St. Peter. Then we explored the oldest synagogue in Rome, wandered beneath Bernini’s exquisite marble statues, and took a rowboat out into a pond and chased ducks. After that came Naples, with its impressive museums and legendary pizza. We took a day trip to Mount Vesuvius, Herculaneum, and Pompeii. (That's right. All in one day. Believe it or not, the trains were on time!)
D: After the whirlwind of the first week, we moved on to the Amalfi Coast. This was the chill part of our vacation. We didn't have set places we wanted to visit - we just experienced as much of the coast as we could. Which, by the way, meant a TON of stairs. Stairs going up, stairs going down. Xander joked after we walked down thousands of steep, winding steps from Ravello to Amalfi, that he was afraid that when we sat down, our jelly-legs would not stand us up again. I think the adrenalin and glee was strong enough to keep us moving - also, the prospect of dinner. We had an excessive amount of amazing meals on that vacation. And gelato. In every city. Luckily, even though we ate our way through Italy, we also walked our way through Italy, so our clothes still fit us just fine by the end.
X: It’s rare that a big experience lives up to your expectations. I can say with absolute certainty that this trip exceeded mine, in more ways than one. I had never spent so much continuous time with anyone, and I was worried things might sour a week and a half in. And although my spontaneous “we’ll figure it out” mentality occasionally clashed with Dunja’s exceptionally-planned schedule, by the end I was certain that even if our trip was two years, or two hundred, I would love every minute. When you meet someone who makes you feel that, marry them!
D: On our last night (we wrapped up the trip with a couple of nights back in Naples) - as we sat staring at the exploded pile that our suitcases had become - we looked at each other and marveled that we were still so happy in each other's company. It was two uninterrupted weeks of togetherness - catching planes, trains, and ferries; checking into and out of hotels; getting a little lost in ancient ruins near sunset; getting pooped on by a jerk pigeon (Xander); slightly panicking on the tiny motorboat until getting behind the wheel and then looooving it (me). And we were still holding hands and making out, and just generally, being The Disgustingtons (which in Italy, is apparently not that unusual - we saw SO many lovey couples around us and we seemed to just blend in). This vacation was the perfect way to celebrate our new engagement, and we knew that we'd want to bring in some of that feeling of Italy and that vacation to the ceremony and reception.
Dunja: Wedding planning has been SO. MUCH. FUN. A couple of good friends whose wedding we had attended sent us a few books on wedding planning very soon after we got engaged, and they really put us in the right frame of mind. We didn't get overwhelmed with everything that people say you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO HAVE. We made lists of what was important to us - there *may* have been a spreadsheet or two (or eighteen...) - we prioritized, and really aimed to stick to the budget we decided on. And gave ourselves plenty of time, which definitely took a lot of the pressure off.
Xander: Those books helped tremendously. Neither of us had really considered getting married at all until we met each other, so we were starting from scratch. And I really got into the planning! Dunja made a list of potential venues and I would go through and zero in on the places I liked. Then we'd take road trips - little "mini-vacations" we called them - to see several at a time. Why not use wedding planning as an excuse to have fun?
D: I know the spreadsheets make it seem like I *might* be a bridezilla, but the truth is, I just really love lists ;) Ultimately, we found a beautiful outdoor/indoor venue that would allow us to bring just a little of that Italy vibe into the decor, but that would take care of just about everything for us with minimal stress. For us, the most important thing is that we get to pledge our love in front of our closest family and friends - and then dance until we can't feel our feet afterwards!
X: We're fortunate that we align in so many ways. Often we would finish touring a venue and have the same opinion about the person we just met. Some things are more important to one of us, but for all of the big decisions we've found we have similar priorities, and a similar philosophy. Things may not go as planned, but we won't let it ruin our day. Maybe the mic will malfunction. Maybe it'll rain. Maybe I'll get spaghetti sauce on my suit, and then have to lick it off in public, embarrassing everyone present. The point is, as long as I'm with her, it'll be a perfect day :)
Dunja: Neither of us knew on the night this photo was taken (as his birthday present, we went to a Charles Bradley concert two months into the relationship) that we had met our forever person. I don't think either of us expected we would ever meet someone whose company we would so thoroughly and continuously enjoy. We were each very independent, maybe even a tiny bit crotchety. I had been perfectly fine flying through life solo, and now I want to have all of my adventures in life with him.
Xander: Once the wedding excitement is over we'll find something else to dive into, something we can enjoy together. Maybe we'll take up polo. That's a thing, right? And of course we'll have vacations, weekend getaways, and evenings on the couch.
D: Even as we are preparing for the wedding and looking toward the future, we make an effort to be really present with each other. Every night together, every weekend, is an opportunity to enjoy each other's company. And snuggle. We make plans for the future - vacations, new experiences, visits with our families, eventually a house - but even in the simplest, most mundane moments, we really... bask.
X: Since meeting her, I've felt as though I'm on the most wonderful ride, and I hope it never stops. As Ziggy Marley said, "One lifetime isn't enough." I don't think I'd be satisfied if we lived to be a thousand, but I'll cherish every moment with her as if it's all I have.