Quite often, Haley and I get asked how we met. I really love the story. It really fits into our personalities well, and it’s totally random.
Rewind back to early February, just before Valentines Day 2013.
We were both ending our former relationships we were in, and we chose to coincidentally go to a bar to unwind and go have some fun. For her, it was also a ‘model search’ competition that she was a part of, and for me, a good friend of mine told me that I had to come out and grab a drink with him to get my mind off everything and just kick it. That place was Amber Restaurant in downtown Seattle in the Belltown neighborhood. The music was bumping, drinks were flowing, and the place had some amazing energy. I will forever be grateful to my buddy, Scott, who dragged me out that evening. (Ultimately, he became one of my 9 groomsmen).
I wasn’t ‘looking’ for anyone that evening. Neither was Haley. We quite simply just wanted to individually have a fun night out on the town and have a care-free evening. And that’s exactly what we got.
So, how we met? A bar. Classic.
My evening got started out by bumping into a photographer who was interested in interning/assisting with me and we got to chatting about photography things. You know, as we always do when two photographers bump into each other.
It wasn’t until a few minutes into that conversation, a random woman came up to me (that person was Haley), and asked — “Hi! Are you Kyle? The photographer?” (At this point in my career, I was mainly known for my work out of Los Angeles, and she had been following my work through social media for the couple of years prior to us actually meeting face-to-face.)
I replied, “Yes, I’m Kyle – may I ask who you are…?” My initial reaction was that she was absolutely stunning, and that I have never met anyone quite like her. There was something different about her that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and that intrigued me to want to get to know more.
We quickly had a brief conversation about what she was up to for the modeling competition, and she wanted to just give me a compliment over my work and how she likes it, and how she would love to work together sometime. She also wanted some feedback on her portfolio, which I said I’d be happy to give her advice and feedback on at a different time. (Of course, this was my segue to asking for her number).
She put her number into my phone, and a few days later I texted her while in New York for a meeting with a magazine. I said that I wanted to get together with her when I returned for a drink in Edmonds – for the only purpose of getting to know each other better and to chat about the industry (now our favorite city in the PNW, and where we intend to buy our future ‘forever home.’) It was that drink together in Edmonds at The Loft that we had our first “date,” and where everything took off from there.
That was on February 19th, 2013. Our first official “date.”
About two months later, we were living with each other and traveling once a month to Los Angeles together. I was photographing something every day in Greater LA, and she was there helping me on set. The time we had together was amazing, and traveling so frequently while living together really made us get to know each other very, very quickly.
The ups and downs were all part of it (let’s be honest). We argued, and we learned each other’s tick’s and pet peeves. We also learned how to communicate with one another, and how to respect our different opinions and viewpoints. It took us a bit to figure out all of those things, but everything made us stronger together. Ultimately, I wouldn’t have changed anything for the world. My life is pretty crazy and unpredictable, and I respect Haley for keeping up with it all. She’s amazing.
We kept saying, ‘I like like you’ to each other. Corny for sure, but we were both coming out of relationships and we wanted to take things slowly… even though nothing was “slow” in reality. We felt the love for each other early on, but it’s nerve-racking saying those words to another person. Personally, I choose my words very carefully (most the time), and when I say things, I mean those things.
It wasn’t until about two o’clock in the morning in a QFC parking lot where I said to her, “Haley, I like like like you. You know what, no. I don’t. I love you.” She laughed, smiled, and said, “I love you too, Kyle.”
Fast-forward two years, and we got engaged in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico on March 9th, 2015.
It was at that time that Haley and I started to chat about buying a house together, for which we saved up some money during the following wedding season and put an offer on a house mid-engagement in December 2015, and closed on our first home purchase in January 2016 (where we now reside in Lake Stevens, Washington with our two cute little Yorkie-Poo’s).
For more about us and our story, keep reading the blog posts. You can always go back to https://lumaweddings.com/meet-kyle and read more from those blog grids if you want to read everything in order, too!
Can’t wait to learn more about YOU!!!
Want to learn more about us?
- How I proposed to her in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Our proposalmoon vacation around the Caribbean
- Our wedding day at Wandering Waters, Artist Point near Mount Baker
- Working as a husband & wife team
