I am excited to share with you the top 3 contestants for our free wedding photography contest. Here they are in alphabetical order. Vote for your favorite and the winner will be announced on March 1st just after noon mountain time! (The results will be hidden until then)

P.S.- The photos in this post were submitted by the contestants, not taken by Picture The Day :).

Contestant #1: Diedre and Bennett

I was a 36-year-old single mom, working hard as an estate planning attorney in Los Angeles.  He was a 48-year-old confirmed bachelor, also an estate planning attorney but in Boulder.  He first saw me when I taught a class on trusts that he attended in Las Vegas but we didn’t meet.  In San Diego, three years later, a mutual friend invited us to lunch and dinner.  We knew there was something between us when we shared my drink, a kir royale.

We instant-messaged and talked for a couple of months and then he spontaneously flew out to see me, overcoming his fear of flying.  At the airport he presented me with a box of chocolates from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and later with a beautiful hand-made gem necklace by a Boulder artisan.  By the end of that visit, we were in love. That was almost two years ago and we have been inseparable ever since, talking on the phone every single day at least twice and visiting each other every two weeks.  Bennett has really had to work on his fear of flying!

Last summer, he said something he never thought he’d say.  “I’d marry you,” he said in passing.  I was flattered but knew his bachelor past and didn’t take it seriously.  I now know that, at that moment, his heart was committed to its mate.

On Christmas Day, 2008, I opened my stocking to find a box of chocolates with a jewelry box inside.  (I assumed it was a pair of earrings because I had been hinting about them.)  When I opened the box I was speechless: a 3.5 carat ring was blurring my vision.  Finally, I found my voice and said “Yes”.

What makes us special as a couple is Bennett.  There is no sweeter, more generous, loving, transformed, conscious man.  He climbs 14ers, invests his time in self-improvement, keeps me delighted with surprises, and helps raise my children, whom he loves as his own.

Ours will be a romantic marriage, filled with little gifts of love and delights.  And also a committed marriage, in which we will grow together through revealing more and more of our true selves with each day.  I know who Bennett is.  And he knows who I am.  My soul has found its mate.

Contestant #2: Jenn and Roger

It was fall of 2004 when I kept noticing the same brown hat with a green, yellow, and red band of color around it.  It wasn’t so much the hat that caught my eye, but the man sporting the hat.  From noticing the hat, I moved on to noticing his plaid snap front shirt and his perfectly fitting jeans.  Among all of his stylish garb was a beautiful smile with soft brown eyes.  Boulder is a small town and my days there were often punctuated by running into people I knew.  This mysterious man was different.  When I saw him, whether on the street or in a store, my gaze focused on him and everything around him went blurry.  I began to notice him more regularly, causing confusion as to whether I had met him somewhere, or simply seen him so much that I thought I did.

On December 8th, in celebration of my friend’s birthday, I went out to the equivalent of my “Cheers”, which I hadn’t been to lately.  Tired from a long day of work and ready for bed, I stumbled down the stairs into the bar in my sweats and a tank.  As I opened the door to the bar, a wave of heat flashed down my body.  Sitting inside the door of the bar asking for my ID was this mystery hottie.  Totally taken aback, I showed him my ID and continued to find my friend.  Disregarding that it was his birthday I bombarded my friend for advice.  “What is he doing here?  Should I talk to him?  What should I say?  I can’t believe what I am wearing.”  My friend convinced me that it was the best idea to talk to him.  Since that is exactly what I wanted to hear, I followed his advice.

Absolutely stupefied by the situation, all eloquence and grace escaped me.  I confidently walked toward the entrance to the bar where he was stationed.  Hoping something clever would come out, I opened my mouth and uttered, “Do I know you, or do I think I know you ‘cuz I’ve seen you around?”  Really Jenn?  Is that the best you could do?  Lucky for me he couldn’t run away since he was working.  To my surprise, he entertained my mindless question by recounting 5 months of chance encounters.  “Yeah, you waited on me the Brasserie (restaurant I worked in), I saw you at the record shop in store performance, I talked to you at the coffee shop when you were going to the RJD2 show….” I could feel my face turning a bright shade of red.  He proceeded to remind me that when I waited on him, he asked me about the single malt scotches and I didn’t know how to pronounce them. Single malt scotch, really?  How old is this guy, 85?)  Like a ton of bricks, it all hit me.  I clearly remembered stumbling over ridiculous multi-syllabic scotch names in front of the gorgeous man and telling my co-workers to “check out the guy sitting outside.”  The hat, the in-store, the smile, it was like all of a sudden I put on my glasses and clearly saw the happenstance connections of he past couple of months. The rest of the evening was a total blur as I talked to him for a bit and left the bar that night floating.  Needless to say, I started frequenting that bar again.

Not that anyone could forget someone as witty as me, but the next time I showed up and he was at the bar, he didn’t ask for my ID.  If I am not mistaken, which is clearly possible, he also greeted me with a hug the second or third time I saw him.  Immediately, being kind of a hug snob, I noticed that this guy also valued a good hug.  There was nothing skimpy about it. I wondered if he felt my heart pounding against his as we hugged.  I hope so.  Did I miss something again? Had it only been a couple of days since we first formally spoke, or had weeks flown by.  Nope, just a few days, which added to the excitement. In these few days I found out that he was from the East Coast (check!), he was working on his Masters (check!), he had great taste in music (check!), and his eyes and smile are a million times more radiant in close proximity (check, check!)

Less than a week later, I went to a holiday party at a restaurant.   All dressed up, I was greeting friends and getting into line to get food.  Then again, the tunnel vision hit.  The hat, the shirt. another coincidental meeting to add to the list.  By this time I’m thinking, this has to mean something.  “I knew you were going to be here,” he said.  What?   Was he thinking about me?  “I just had a feeling I would see you tonight.”  As it turns out, he was DJing the party (check!).  As the night continued and my bravery escalated, I found myself talking to him A LOT.  At this point, he might interject and tell you about how he played a G-Love song for the party crowd and I very matter-of-factly told him that the song was not ok.  (It’s true, I did.)  What was crazy was that I did not really expect him to do anything about it, but instead, he stopped it in the middle of the song and changed it.  As Steve Urkel, the nerdy character on the show “Family Matters”, would say, “Did I do that?”  I spent the majority of the evening chattering away.  Despite my perceived ridiculousness, I must have been remotely charming because he asked me for my phone number that night.

Lucky for me, he didn’t let the analytical dating minds in Swingers deter him from calling me just a couple of days later.  Before I knew it, we were meeting after work, eating lunch together, and watching movies. We have been laughing the days away ever since.  In the past four years we have accomplished moving to Denver together, me going back to school, getting evicted, buying a house, buying a car, finishing up our masters, and most recently putting an addition on the house and planning our wedding.  I look forward to spending the rest of my life with Rog and enjoying all of the experiences and laughs we encounter along the way.

Contestant #3: Jessica and Michael

The story of how Michael and I met, could seem cliche to some, but it was fate that we did.

There is a local Country Western bar in Denver called, Grizzly Rose. I was going there for dancing probably 3 nights a week, regularly, with my girlfriends. Michael has been there quite a bit, but he didn’t go as often as I did.

One Tuesday night, which happens to be one of the slowest nights for the club, Michael’s friend Ben talked him into going to the Rose. Michael wasn’t planning on going out that night, but decided to do his friend a favor. He didn’t dress up, just put on his old holey jeans and a wrinkled up t-shirt.

My girlfriend and I had gone to the bar with the intention to learn a new line dance, but instead had just ended up grabbin a couple beers and hangin out. We happen to notice Michael and Ben walk in, we looked at each other and decided to go over and talk to them.

Usually I am not the shy one, but at this time as we were walking towards the guys, I got nervous and anxious. Thankfully, even though I chickened out, my friend continued on and pulled me over.

Michael and I hit it off right from the start. We danced a bit and just hung out till the bar closed. What really did me in was when we were coming in from outside (a smoke break) he gently grabbed me by the arm to stop me, and asked me “So are you going to give me your number, so I can take you out to dinner sometime?”. That was all it took.

We have been together now for almost three years. He is the best fiance ever. I still can’t believe how much we fit together.