Today is Valentine's Day and it also happens to be the seventh anniversary of the first date for my husband and me.  Yes, first dates and Valentine's Day usually are avoided because, well, there's enough pressure with each factor alone and combining them?  Potential disaster.

But for my husband and I it eventually led to us being the husband and wife we are today.

So in honor of our first date seven years ago, I'm going to tell the story.

Mind you, Robbe and I did not meet seven years ago.  We actually met about 17 years ago at a high school party.  He and I grew up three miles away from each other in the same town, only he went to private school, and it was only because one of his best friends and neighbors went to public school, too, that a girlfriend and I were at said fateful party.  Robbe and I talked for about an hour at this party but alas, he did not ask for my number and I was not about to offer it up (didn't want to look "pressed" as we used to say back in the day).  But I never did forget Robbe.

Fast forward ten years...those ten years brought us other relationships, only a couple serious, but most?  Not so much. 

At the time I was working temporarily at a foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC (because that's how one transfers their skills in DC after the internet bubble bursts).  The controller at this organization went to high school with Robbe and when he mentioned his name in passing one day at work, I said, "I know that guy, we totally met at a party a long time ago and I always wondered what happened to him."

At a benefit party one night, a large group of us were all socializing and Robbe was there.  This group started hanging together at Chadwick's and Smith Point in Georgetown, Clyde's Tower Oaks in Rockville, and a number of friends' homes in and around DC.  Let's just say I would have had a lot more check-ins on Gowalla back then.  And my Facebook mobile uploads would see a lot more photos.

Admittedly, there was a part of me that really liked Robbe and couldn't help but wonder if it was fate bringing us together after meeting all those years ago.  At the same time, I loved our motley crew of friends and thought that if we ended up dating and...gasp...breaking up, well it'd be awkward for the group and at the time, the camaraderie was what movies like St. Elmo's Fire (set in Georgetown) are made of.

I had also just started dating someone but wasn't sure where it was going to go.  Well, that guy, fortunately, made that decision for me and, finding myself unarguably available, you'd think the answer would be obvious, but I somehow knew that if I shared my feelings, there was no turning back.  And that was scary.

I shared with my friends that I was no longer dating the other guy, including Robbe.  And two days before Valentine's Day, Robbe calls and suggests that since he knows neither of us have plans for that night, why not go to dinner together?  The way we discussed making plans was very platonic in nature but after rehashing this story, as we always do on Valentine's Day, neither of us knew what it meant.

Thanks to a friend who could pull some strings to get us a reservation at Old Ebbitt Grill near the White House, that is where we shared our first date.  By the middle of dinner and after a few glasses of wine we both confessed that we were hoping that this would be the first of many dates.  We shared a few kisses in the cab to Old Town Alexandria to meet friends.

The next day, I did something unprecedented.  I deleted, permanently, the phone numbers of ex-boyfriends from my cell phone.  (No seriously, this was unprecedented, my best friends were horrifed, worried, and excited all at the same time.) Had we been on Facebook back in 2003, we probably would have changed our status to "in a relationship" within a week or so and seven months later in September, our Facebook status would have been changed to "engaged".

A year after we were engaged we were married in the chapel of the private school that kept us from ever being in the same Algebra class or any other class, for that matter, together.  And his best friend that brought me to that party?  He flew out from California for it. 

And that motley crew?  They were all there, too.

PS.  Wedding photos by Emilie Sommer, follow her on Twitter