{two part harmony}

Do you remember my idea for a handmade book telling the story of how Justin and I met? Well, good old Justin dutifully did his homework and filled out all of his pages, as did I, and so I set about harmonising those two very different sets of answers to the same questions.

I'm not a hoarder of (too) many things, but we do have a sizable stack of old number plates, which I thought would lend themselves perfectly to making covers for our little book. We met in Arizona, hence the front cover. It was the number plate to my first car -- 765, Yeh! And the back cover is a Texas plate, to show where we are now.

So, onto the stories. I laid the book out so that Justin's version and my version of each story faced each other, for easy comparison of details. Not surprisingly, each of my pages is full of text. Justin is much more minimal, but also much more exact. While I waffle on about what constitutes a "first date", Justin gives an address for the cinema we went to...

...and isn't afraid to restate the important facts (i.e. that his team won at Human Battleship!)



With the text pages facing each other, the backsides of each page were blank. So I added a few photos that seemed significant. Yes, I know, I was born to be a Texan...

Some of our answers were pretty similar, with only small differences in dates and details. However, it turned out that our stories of our wedding couldn't have been more different. While I described our beautiful wedding by the Great Wall, surrounded by friends and family, Justin gave his account of our legal ceremony, back in Tucson. Check out his memories. Seriously, a born romantic.

(The very top question is "when was the wedding?", in case you're wondering!)

But it's wonderful to have memories of both days written down. And, can you believe, I never noticed that our judge only had one arm. I was too focused on being in love. Or maybe too worried about getting mugged?

Each page is simply laid out in Pages (with text-box 4" wide and justified to one side), printed out onto medium-weight cardstock, trimmed to 5.5" wide, and then punched with two holes. The book is bound together with circular binder rings, which can be found at craft shops. This will allow us to add in more pages as we want, and to continue our story. 

I'm already looking forward to reading Justin's account of Tilly's birth, and I've got this photo to stick in somwhere:

We took it at Dave and Busters years ago. It's supposed to predict what our baby would look like. Granted, it's a boy, but not even close to how Tilly turned out. Shows what arcades know about genetics.

I hope you enjoyed a little glimpse of our seven-or-so years together, both from my point of view, and from my dear funny Justin's perspective. I'm sure we'll enjoy reading back over these over the years!