Our Wedding › Our story

Cam’s version

First of all, let it be known that I have witnesses to my account.

It was the summer of 1992. I was 17 years old, two weeks away from my 18th birthday. I was at my freshman orientation at Point Loma Nazarene College when I spotted my future husband. Literally. When I first saw Doug Bowman I thought he was the cutest guy ever. He was a popular, well-liked guy. He was active in student government, his fraternity, and had amazing artistic talent, hence he was Director of Publicity. Imagine that!

It was only about two weeks into the new school year when I decided to go out on a limb–or a cliff, whichever way you want to see it–and call Doug. Just one problem. I didn’t have his phone number. My friends and I came up with the brilliant idea that we would just call his dorm and ask for him. That night I think I talked to every male in Hendricks Hall except Doug Bowman.

Okay, so that didn’t work out so well. My friend Brandi and I had a better plan. We would buy U2 concert tickets and invite him and one of his friends (who will remain nameless) to go with us. So I called Doug again and asked him if he would like to go with us to see U2. He said no; he had already gone.

You would have thought by now that I understood what rejection felt like. But no. I needed to make sure that this was, in fact, Doug, my future husband, rejecting me. Another friend took pity on me. By now, everyone knew I had a crush on Doug. Gwen Holly was a good friend of Doug’s roommate. She invited me to go with her to visit him at his dorm. “Great, lets go,” I said. Third time’s a charm right? Not exactly.

Gwen and I went to visit Doug and his roommate. Let’s just say Doug had his nose in his books and didn’t have time for more than a grunt of acknowledgment for me. I think this was my “ah-ha” moment: Doug doesn’t like me. Whatever the situation may be, I never stopped admiring Doug from afar.

In the Fall of 2004, a friend of ours from Point Loma, Jen Westphal, was getting married. We decided to have a girls weekend in San Francisco. After our trip was planned, I was introduced to the wonders of Google. I had no idea that you could type in a name, and voila! Information appears. This is how I found out about Stopdesign, Doug’s design consulting business. I also noticed that there was a contact form on the site. So I thought, what the heck? I had nothing to loose (that I hadn’t lost before) and we would be in San Francisco anyway.

After a couple weeks, Doug returned my e-mail and he agreed to meet up with Jen and I for an early afternoon city tour. Needless to say, I’ve been taking that city tour ever since.

Doug’s version

I’ll admit my memory of Cam during our Point Loma days is a little fuzzy. (She’ll try to tell you my memory of everything is a little fuzzy.) I’m starting to wonder how much of my current memory is patched and filled in with Cam’s version of our story.

My only graspable memories of Cam in college involved two phone conversations. And I only participated in one of them.

The first was when she cold-called the dorm’s front “box” (reception area) because she didn’t have my room number. When the resident assistant paged me via the dorm intercom, five of my buddies, who were hanging out in my room at the time, tagged along down to the box with me to see who the girl was on the phone. Instead of Cam getting to talk with me as she intended, the phone got passed around to each of my friends. We never got to talk with each other that night.

The second time Cam called, she had the direct phone number for my room. Cam mentioned she had tickets to see U2 in Los Angeles, and she wondered if I’d like to go with her. Despite the fact that U2 was my favorite band back then, I had just seen their Achtung Baby show the night before at the Sports Arena in San Diego. I didn’t really know Cam that well, so I thanked her and politely passed on the offer.

Fast-forward to Fall of 2004. I was touring around Australia and New Zealand on a month-long holiday after speaking at a conference in Sydney. During one of my stops at an internet cafe, I checked email and found a message sent to me from someone named “Cam”. I remembered a Cam in college who was two years younger. She was the U2 girl. But I never knew her last name in college, so the second part of her name threw me off, making me wonder if it was the same person.

Cam said she’d be visiting San Francisco in a few weeks, and asked if I would like to meet up for dinner or coffee while she was in town. Always willing to entertain visitors, especially those somehow connected with my past, I finally accepted the invitation this time.

The day for our meetup came. Cam was in San Francisco with another friend, Jen Westphal. So I picked up both of them at their hotel. The three of us toured around the City for an hour or so, giving Jen an introduction to San Francisco since she hadn’t been here yet. For some reason, I ended up taking them to my favorite restaurant in North Beach, L’Osteria del forno.

Despite the fact that Jen was with us the whole time, she was busy chatting up everyone else around us. This gave Cam and I lots of time for one-on-one conversation. I think we both started out that night a little timid. But by the end of dessert, conversation flowed, and it felt as if we had known each other for years. (Well… we had known each other for years–twelve of them, in fact.)

We dropped Jen off at the hotel, then headed back out to enjoy more of the sounds and lights of the City. We talked and talked into the wee hours of the morning, as time passed by without us knowing or caring. When I finally took Cam back to her hotel, there was no way I was going to let it end there. No way I would allow another 12 years go by before seeing her again. I asked Cam to come back to San Francisco the following weekend so we could see each other again. I didn’t need to twist her arm one bit.

Our version

The rest of our story for the next year and a half entangles us in a wonderful tale of true companionship, discovery of incomparable compatibility, and ultimately falling in love. Had you asked either of us 14 years ago what we thought about marrying each other, we would have told you you’re insane. Now, we can’t imagine how the person we each marry could be anyone else.