How I Met My Future Husband

Oh, the questions. How does one go from single to engaged to a foreigner in less than year? How does one end up in a long-distance relationship that spans an entire ocean? How do you manage to be so awesome?

While I cannot reveal the secrets to my awesome, I can tell you how I met and fell in love with my fiance.


To clear up a common notion, we did not meet online. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We just met the old-fashioned way – while drunk in a bar. My good friend and I were in New Orleans on vacation. It was our last night in the city, and we were out, feeling worse for the wear after four days in a city where the bars never close, but we're not quitters and we're no amateurs. We weren't about to waste our last night of vacation.


Around midnight, we wandered into a club on Bourbon Street called The Beach, which is known for its mechanical whale. For a mere $5, you could humiliate yourself in front of the whole bar and then probably vomit after, and we really wanted to see this spectacle.


So we got a seat at the bar, but to our disappointment found that no one was yet drunk enough to think riding a mechanical whale would make them look cool and awesome. So we began scanning the crowd instead. That’s when we spotted two men about our age at the edge of the dance floor. We decided we should talk to these guys, and I’m not really sure why. Probably because they seemed normal – they weren’t falling all over the place, drinking out of novelty plastic cups of any kind or wearing tons of beads and leering at women – and we had had really good luck meeting cool locals and out-of-towners so far on our trip.


So, I walked over to where they were standing and pretended to watch the dance floor as well, waiting for a break in the music to say something interesting and witty and cool. But before I could blow their minds, out of the corner of my eye I noticed the dark-haired one notice me, elbow his friend and nod in my direction. So I waited for this young man to blow my mind.




And I think what he said was, “Are you enjoying the whale?”


I noticed three things: someone had actually gotten up on the whale and was being thrashed about all with a surprising ability to hold on to their drink; this young man was incredibly handsome; he definitely was not a local.


After introductions and shot-buying, Laurence asked me if I wanted to dance. I declined, saying I’m not really a club person, to which he responded neither was he. So my friend and I proposed we all go to another bar we might all actually enjoy.


(I later found out that he doesn’t really like dancing anyway, so I find it really sweet that he asked me because he thought I would want to, or because that's what you do when you meet a girl you like and people are dancing. In fact, now that I think about it, I have never seen the man I’m about to marry dance – ever. Unless you count shoulder dancing to Hall and Oates, and he’s pretty good at that. So I think we’re safe. I mean, a couple has to have at least one good dancer, to carry the team, you know? Just as every couple needs at least one person who can cook or who is good at simple math, to figure out what to tip the server or how to make correct change on the spot while someone is watching you.)


So, that’s it, that’s how we met. We spent the rest of the night talking about the things you talk about when you meet someone new, and going to different live music venues and bars we'd discovered previously. It all seemed just like a nice night where we met some cool people, and then we went back to Phoenix. I hope you weren’t looking forward to a love at first sight situation, or some declaration that I somehow knew this would be the man I would marry. I hadn’t a clue. I just thought I had been lucky to spend my last night of vacation with someone I found to be handsome. And clever. And genuine. And funny. And he didn't try too hard to be any of those things. He just was.



I didn’t even think I would see him again. Now, having said all that about not believing in soul mates or love at first sight, I think Laurence knew something special had just happened. I suppose every couple also needs at least one person who isn’t too cynical to believe in the possibilities of a transatlantic love story.

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He said:
So together with a good friend from London we decided that in summer we would go to the States to visit my Auntie in Austin, Texas, and then road trip it to Louisiana. So, the second half of our trip was spent in New Orleans.

We arrived and straight away headed to a bar to watch a World Cup game (Germany Vs Spain for those who are interested). Anyway, while enjoying the game the bartender told us we had to go to 'The Beach' a bar that encourages ladies to ride a mechanical whale topless. Lee and I looked at each other and in unison said, "We have to see that." 

Now, your expectations of me may have dropped after reading that, but you have to understand that the idea of a girl drunk enough to take her top off and sit on the back on a piece of machinery like that just had to be seen. Not for the fact that nudity was even involved but just that a person would want to do that in front of a crowd of intoxicated holiday makers.
A couple of nights later, we remembered that we hadn't been to The Beach bar yet, so we decided to head on in, and to be honest it was pretty disappointing. But the Whale was immense.

"The Whale"

I do remember a ridiculous smile on it's face. So Lee and I are standing at the side, looking cool (obviously) and having a cheeky drink when a petit brunette catches my eye at the bar. I give Lee a nudge and say "Mate, we have to go and chat to those girls". But by the time I've pointed the girls out and turned around, the petit brunette in question is right in front of me! 

Obviously thinking on my feet, I pulled out a chat up line from the top draw: "Hey, are you enjoying the whale?" I know I can't believe I said that either. Although it did make me sound intelligent, witty and charming, hey?! I don't know what I expected this girl to respond to that idiotic question, but I had her attention somehow, and she stuck around, so I think the next words that fell out of my mouth must have been more engaging than that.

So that's my version of mine and Lauren's first meeting. We spent the night drinking and chatting about random things, and I think I impressed her with my ability to count to 10 in Japanese and my extensive knowledge of the America state capitols. That's what gets you the girl.

I remember having an overwhelming feeling of deflation when we went our separate ways, and didn't quite know why that was. The next day, when I got up (with a naughty hangover) and went down to get some breakfast, I was still feeling a little gutted that this girl had left town and that I would never see her again. I didn't even know her surname; all I knew was that her name was Lauren and she lived in Arizona and she was gone. Bugger. I must have looked as bad as I felt, because Lee proceeded to mock me for the rest of the trip, saying I was "smitten" and I had obviously fallen for this girl. I told him to shut up and start drinking again. It worked.

After a week in NOLA, we flew back to London, and landed at around 6am. When I turned my phone on I had a Facebook message from a 'Lauren Vasquez' and I thought "who the hell is that?! Must be another spam message for a friend request." I was pretty happy when I read the message and about the fact that she had found me and even bothered to message me. I replied and we started our exchange of good music and funny Youtube videos and the rest, as they say, is ... transatlanticism.