Jennifer Stierer & Richard Hoggard
Wedding Date: October 1, 2011
Jennifer’s Story…..
Ricky and I met officially at a local bar on the north-side of Indianapolis called The Fox and Hound. Ok not my ideal place to meet Mr. Right by any means, but it worked out perfectly and I wouldn’t have changed a thing. But before I tell the story of our unique meeting lets rewind the story about four months earlier. My friend and I were sitting outside on her balcony at our apartment building, and saw a young man pull up and park right out front of our building. Out steps and man dressed in Army fatigues, of course our mouths dropped as we said a mellow “hi” as he walked into our building. Over the next few months, I saw the first floor army guy come and go but never said anything but hi, or apologizing for my dog always running up to him and begging for his attention. My dad was in town one night midsummer, and he suggested we meet up for drinks at The Fox and Hound, which conveniently was across the street from my apartment complex. After meeting my dad and had a few cocktails, I noticed the first floor army guy and had mustered up the guts to go talk to him. We introduced ourselves and knew that we lived in the same apartment building, so we immediately had something in common. As the night continued so did our laughter and conversations. From that point on we had become inseparable, from late night movies to secret admirer notes left on my car; I knew he was the one for me. Our free spirited romance came to a screeching halt when the day came that Ricky was being relocated for the Army. We decided that it was a fun time with each other but knew things weren’t going to last forever. Boy were we wrong! A few weeks went by without Ricky, and we both fought the feeling we knew we had for each other. We still talked everyday and our fun loving friendship and short lived relationship seemed to never miss a beat. I knew I needed to see him and confront my true feelings; I was in love with the first floor army guy. Ricky was visiting his family in Tampa, FL before he relocated to his base in Savannah, GA. I called him around 3PM on a Monday and asked what he was doing that evening around 10:30. He said nothing and I asked him if he wanted to take a trip to the air port to pick me up. This is the moment he says he knew I was the one. We both knew that what we wanted was to be with each other, we see the best of ourselves in each other’s eyes. Time passed and we traveled as often as we could to be together, the flights became part of our monthly lives. Our relationship grew stronger as time went by and we fell more and more in love. I knew this was the man I wanted to grow old with. The distance made our relationship much stronger forcing the communication to be key to keep us going. Because Ricky is in the Army we knew there would come a time for him to be deployed. The trips became more frequent, and we made plans for his leave of absence before he was deployed to visit both of our families and our friends back in Indianapolis. Which meant a lot of traveling within a week’s time. We went to visit his mom in Charleston SC. Our first day there we went to site see in Charleston, I had never been so I was taking massive pictures, cool pictures and some not so cool pictures; I took pictures of everything. We had finished lunch overlooking a bay where dolphins had been swimming, and headed to The Isle of Palms, where we would walk the beach. Still fascinated by everything I continued to take pictures hearing comments from the peanut gallery about my choice of pictures to taken. We were walking along the beach and I stopped to write in the sand knowing he was a head of me and if I took a picture of what I wrote I would get made fun of. I drew “I love you” in the sand and took a picture. As I turned around he was standing behind me with this gaze of “did you really just take a picture of the sand”? Waiting for the picture jokes to begin he handed me our flip flops. I griped and said I didn’t want to hold them and then he got down on one knee. With me being completely oblivious to the situation I asked if he was okay ( it was quite hot out he could have been overly hot for all I knew) He looked up at me and I started to shake as he took a black box out of his pocket. The pocket I had just soaked from kicking water on him from the ocean 5 minutes earlier, oops. I said ” oh my god no you are not are you?” he looked me in the eye and asked me to marry him. Overwhelmed and extremely excited I bluntly asked “are you sure? Is this for real? You’re kidding me,” shaking and tears filling my eyes with joy, he said ” nope I’m pretty sure I am on one knee in the sand asking you to marry me” In shock I still hadn’t answered, thinking he knew my answer already. He softly said “Baby are you going to say yes, people are staring” I looked around me and saw tons of on lookers waiting for my reply. I said yes with tears in my eyes and my face hurting from smiling so much. It was perfect in his words, and I couldn’t have been more surprised. Since the engagement Ricky has deployed to Iraq and we communicate as much as possible, but there are times we don’t get to e-mail or Skype for days and sometimes even a couple weeks. Phone calls are slim to none but getting any type of e-mail or Facebook post is the greatest feeling ever. We are planning for October 1, 2011, for the first day of the rest of our lives together, ‘to infinity and beyond!’
