I’m a big believer in story and that when you share your own, it has the power to really touch and impact others. I have been shaped by so many different people who have shared their truth and parts of who they are. When it comes to my couples, I LOVE hearing their story- from how they met to their quirks and what makes their love unique. When they’re done, they often ask, “What about you?” so I finally decided to sit down and write about how Domenick and I met and continued to fall in love. Here’s our story, from “Hi, I’m Christi,” to “I do!”

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When people hear that I met my husband in Italy, the reaction is always the same. “Oh my goodness, that is SO romantic! That sounds like a fairytale!” That is, of course, how it sounds, but in reality it went much differently (and less fairytale-like). Domenick and I both happened to be studying abroad the same semester. We were sophomores at Loyola University Chicago that both happened to opt to spend our spring semester at Loyola’s Rome campus. 

I didn’t see him from across the room and fall in love instantly, nor did he see me and decide he would do whatever it took to woo me into being his girlfriend. When we met, I was eating lunch alone in mensa, which is what the cafeteria was called in Rome (it’s Italian for “table”). As I pushed more corn onto my fork, I remember him sitting down across the table from me. aaaand that’s literally all I remember. Lucky for you, I kept a very detailed journal while I was abroad, and I’m going to let it fill you in on the rest:

January 25, 2012- …I didn’t have any friends to sit with so I sat alone [for lunch]. Then this kid Dominic (sorry babe- spelled your name wrong in my journal! haha!) came up and sat down. I had met him once but I wasn’t really his friend. He ate with me and completely made my day! He’s studying to be a priest (he’s a seminarian now) and it was so refreshing for me to talk with someone knowledgable about God and faith…

And then we fell in love. NOT. As you can see from my journal entry, Domenick was studying and preparing to become a Catholic priest- and yes, Catholic priests are not allowed to be married. So from the very start, he was very off-limits and I remained very uninterested in him romantically- it just wasn’t on the table so he literally never crossed my mind in being more than a friend.

….And then, we went on our first “not date.” All the details abound in Part II.