Where it all began...

So technically, Jason and I met sometime in the fall of 2001 when I started working at Buca di Beppo in St. Paul. When I started, I had to be a Host/Wait Assistant even though I had previously been a server at the Eden Prairie location. Jason was a bartender and had been working there since about 1995. Unless you are a server, you don’t have much reason to hang out at the bar and chat with the bartender so although we had met, we hadn’t really talked all that much. Time passed and eventually I became a server. Sometime around September of 2002, my friend Tesa (who also worked at Buca) and I were standing at the bar toward the end of the night talking about going to have a drink after work and Jason asked us where we were going. We told him that we were going to the Starting Gate and he said that he might stop by when he was done. I was excited about this because Jason never came out with us after work and he seemed like such a nice and funny guy (later I learned that first impressions are not always true...LOL!!!) The Starting Gate was a few blocks from Buca, so Tesa and I decided to ride over together. After hanging out for a little bit, Jason showed up with our manager Phil and we had a few drinks. It was a fun night. One of the things that we talked about was the fact that there was a strip club called Casey’s right down the street and we thought that it was funny that we all drove past it everyday but no one had ever been inside. We decided that we should get a group together some night after work and go there…super classy, right? :)

Sometime around last call, we called it an evening and headed toward our cars. On the ride back to Buca, Tesa asked me when she thought that Jason and I were going to get together. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then she proceeded to tell me that the attraction was obvious and the flirting going on between us was blatant. The next time that we all worked together, we asked a few people if they wanted to be a part of the group that went to Casey’s. We decided to plan the adventure for Friday, September 6, and we would just go after work. The group ended up being Jason, me, Tesa, Nina, and Mullet (whose real name is Jen Rae.) I have always considered this our “first date”…but now that I think about it, can it really be a first date if there were three other women there?!?!?

So after work on Friday, we changed and headed over to Casey’s. We did not have any expectations that it was going to be a nice place, as we had driven by it for a long time and knew that it was trashy…we did not, however, know that it was going to be quite as tragic as it was! We walked in and amongst the red shag carpet and giant oil paintings of voluptuous women from the 60’s, there were maybe 5 middle-aged men hanging out at the bar. We selected one of the many open tables and sat down. The waitress came over in between taking drags of her Virginia Slim menthol and took our order. She came back a few drags (minutes) later with our beers in a can. Awesome and classy! Mullet and I had won some money playing pull-tabs the previous week, so we decided to each put in $10 and play them again. We won $230!!! After that excitement, one of the “dancers” came out on stage and did her thing. We estimated that she was in her late 40’s/early 50’s. When the song she was “dancing to” was over, she grabbed some money out of her purse and went over to the jukebox to play another song. All of a sudden, we heard Jeremiah was a bullfrog...and she was back on stage to “dance” to Joy to the World. “Sad" is the word that I think we all would have chosen to describe it. Nina had already left by this point, but Tesa, Mullet, and I were thoroughly entertained by the ridiculousness of the situation. Jason was the one that said that we should leave after being there for about 30 or 45 minutes. You know the place is pathetic when the only male in the group is the one saying that you should leave! We decided to listen to Jason and we decided to head to another bar. Tesa took off because she had another job working at Details Salon and she had to work in the morning. Mullet, Jason, and I decided to head down West 7th to Mr. Patom’s (which is now called Shamrock’s.) We had a drink or two there and then headed further down West 7th to McGovern’s. We had a couple drinks there and then it was closing time. Mullet decided to go home, but Jason and I decided to go back to his house because we were having fun and neither of us was tired. Jason gave me a tour of his house and told me about all of the art that was hanging on the walls. At the time, I still had the nasty smoking habit, so we went and sat on the porch so I could smoke. We ended up sitting out on the porch under the blue lights talking until the wee hours of the morning.

Who knew that 6 and a half years later we would be writing the story of how we met for our wedding blog!!!