“Finally!”

“It’s about time.”

“At last.”

“Really?”

Yes, it’s true. We are getting married. Why not? 25 years together should be celebrated by something big. So why not get dressed up and have a wedding?

For those of you who don’t know the history, we met in August 1987 outside the movie theater in the Bedford Mall in Bedford, New Hampshire. It was just a few days before Matt’s 16^th birthday. We shared a mutual friend who went to high school with me at Merrimack High School. Matt went to Concord High School. For the record, I was already 16. There, I said it; I am the older woman, by six months. Matt likes to point this out occasionally.

The following summer, Matt invited me and a friend to hang out at his family’s cottage in York Beach, Maine. It was a cute little beach shack just up the road from Short Sands beach. We hung out there a couple of times over the summer, playing at the beach and at the Fun-O-Rama, eating ice cream at Brown’s every day. We realized that we had far more in common than just our mutual friend. Matt and I became good friends that summer. Over the following autumn, friends told us that we were perfectly matched, but it wasn’t until March of 1989 that we actually listened to our friends. It was our senior year in high school, always a good time to start a new relationship with college looming on the horizon. Despite distances for the first two of years in college, we stayed together.

March 2014 will be our 25^th anniversary. So we decided that we would celebrate with our family and friends, some of whom go all the way back to those early days in New Hampshire. We hope that you can all join us in York on May 3, 2014.

Much love,

Neeley and Matt