Andromydah and Derkommissar1by ~love

Photography / People & Portraits / Emotive Portraits

Laeci and Dan

We met in fourth grade, when Dan was 9 and Laeci was 8. He remembers thinking that she was smart, and she remembers thinking that he was weird. For the next nine years we were in the same class in our small private school, and became close friends in high school. At various points we had crushes on each other and even went on one date in ninth grade, but never managed to time it right. Our senior year, Laeci was the yearbook editor and Dan was the yearbook photographer, and we also made our senior class multimedia show together. After graduation we went to separate colleges 200 miles away, but kept in contact through e-mail and DeviantArt and went to rock concerts together when Laeci was home on breaks. One day in the summer of 2005, Laeci was lonely and called Dan up to see if he wanted to do something. “You can’t say no, because it’s a date” she said. We ended up going to Barnes and Noble to read manga, a late-night showing of Land of the Dead, and Carl’s Junior for milkshakes at 1am—the perfect date for a nerdy couple. Later that week we went on two more dates until our friends started asking, “Are you a couple now?” We came to the sudden realization that we were, and the rest is history. We still go to separate colleges but see each other as often as we can, and consider ourselves lucky to find the perfect person for us—even if they were there all along.