Real People in Love: Lissa & Andrew

This week's Real People in Love are the adorable Lissa & Andrew from Me and Mr. C. I was so happy when Lissa contacted me to participate as I had seen her blog and knew that these two were just as cute as cute could be. Lissa & Andrew have been married for a year and are expecting their first little one in a couple of weeks, and even though they are only a little younger than me I love reading about their young love.

How old are you & Andrew?

We are both the ripe ol' age of 23.

How long have you been together?

We've been married for a year! We were together for five months and one day pre-marriage, though, so I guess that means we've almost been together a year and a half? Haha... we were fast movers.

What are your occupations?

We're both students! Andrew works as a Spanish teacher and I'm a low-key photographer. We also have an etsy shop in the works where I'll sell little stuffed toys for little ones.

How did you meet?

Well, there were several pre-meetings to our first meeting. The first time Andrew saw me was in June of 2008, right after moving into town. I'm not sure exactly what crossed his mind when he saw me, but he likes to say it was love at first sight because he remembers that I spent the whole night laughing with a different boy and he couldn't look away. Regardless, he didn't talk to me. I saw him for the first time the next day, but I found out we were the same age and decided he was way too young to even talk to.

Six months later, he came up to me at a party, which surprised me. He had become fairly good friends with one of my roommates and had even been to our apartment a few times, but he never spoke to me. He says this was because he had a mad crush on me and he didn't know if I was single, but I think he was just shy. Anyway, when he came up to me there was an automatic connection. It's cheesy, I know, but we were completely in love by the time the weekend was over.

How did you get engaged?

When we'd been dating for about five and a half weeks, we were discussing where we were going to live for the next school year and he said, "Do you just want to get married?" and then put his head in his hands as I said, "Are you serious?" That is what we call the Accidental Proposal. A few days later, I picked out my engagement ring and a few weeks after that, after a classy dinner of Chick-fil-A and milkshakes, Andrew took me to a canyon and proposed to me in a little grove of trees. I got so excited I didn't say yes, I just took the ring and jumped around. He was really nervous and had decided to propose like five minutes before, as he'd been planning on proposing earlier in the week, but all his hard work and planning kept falling through. When we tell how we got engaged, though, we usually tell the Accidental Proposal since we already had half our wedding planned by the time I got a ring.

Tell us about your wedding day:

Honestly, our wedding day was the most relaxing day of my life. Exciting, no doubt, but relaxing. We live in Utah, but we got married in Illinois and everyone there was a family member. We got married at 2 pm, so I spent the morning with my sisters and mom and an hour before the ceremony, Andrew showed up at my hotel and walked me to the temple while carrying my wedding dress. Then we got hitched! We were so excited and happy that we ended up laughing during our ceremony, as did everyone there. I also clapped. Andrew cried. I clapped some more.

Define Love:

Love is like the first brush of air against your cheek on an early summer day.

It's also like the first peanut butter m & m. Not the whole bag, just the first few that melt in your mouth. (Did I mention I'm eight months pregnant?)

What is the toughest part of being in a committed relationship?

I'm in the school of thought that nothing is hard unless you decide to make it hard, but sometimes the hardest thing is deciding not to be selfish. Being pregnant, I have been tempted to throw tantrums with a force I haven't felt sine I was five or six, so a lot of the time I have to step back and look at the situation before saying anything. You think your days of being selfish are over when you get married, but as soon as there's a baby in the picture, your days of being selfish are really over... that can be hard.

What is the best part?

Being able to use Andrew as a full body pillow for my pregnant belly when I'm sleeping. Haha. Really, the best part of our marriage is knowing that Andrew will always be there for me to love and be loved by.

What is the best day the two of you have had together?

We've had so many wonderful days, with the cliche (engagement day, wedding day, the day we found out there were going to be three of us) right in the thick of them, but I would be pretty upset if I thought that, at 23, we'd already had our best day. I'm a big believer that the simple days can be the happiest days, so for us, any day we got to spend together is the best day.

What makes you different from other couples?

I wouldn't say this makes us different than a lot of couples, but one thing that really defines our relationship is that we base everything off love. We live incredibly happy, joyful lives that can seem almost idealistic, but sometimes I look around and realize that this is not because of our surroundings, but because we base everything, all of our decisions, on the fact that we love each other. Hopefully, I'll never take this for granted because real, nitty gritty love makes the rest of life so much more breathable and beautiful.

What is your favorite thing to do together?

We just like to be together, in any way. We like to be alone together, with our families together, with our friends together, or in our apartment together. We also really like anything to do with music, museums, food, photographs, art, history, being outside, and/or kissing. We also like to instant message and text each other whenever we're apart. Oh, and we have a never-ending competition about who is the funniest.

Do you have a song?

Pretty much any happy love song-we danced to "The Luckiest" by Ben Folds at our wedding reception and it was beautiful.

What is the most essential element of making it?

I'm not saying you should lose your identity- Andrew makes me more myself than I have ever been- but I think an essential element of making it is thinking of yourselves as "we" instead of "I" simply so you realize that your hopes and dreams for the future are intertwined in every way possible and that they should make both of you happy.

What are your hopes for the future?

I just hope that we keep falling more in love every day and that we can create magical childhoods for the children we bring into the world. That's all I've got figured out so far.

Anything else the world needs to know about love?

It's not as scary, hard, or uncommon as we sometimes like to think.

As always, if you'd like to participate in the Real People in Love series, just shoot me an email!

PS Don't forget that TODAY is the last day to sign up for the Color Me Happy exchange, so if you've been thinking about joining but haven't sent me an email be sure to do it now!