Couples Advice: Ailee Cassel and Hannah Rucker

Hannah, left, and Ailee met at a music festival and couldn't help but to stay in touch. -

For Ailee Cassel and Hannah Rucker, a music festival was the start to their romance. In August before her freshman year in high school, Hannah met Ailee at a music festival in Michigan. The two were inseparable all week, spilling their deepest secrets to each other, thinking they would never see each other again.

However, after they left the festival, they continued emailing and talking on the phone. “We never stopped talking. We ran up a lot of phone bills,” Ailee says. That December, they decided to make their relationship official.

Last August at the music festival, Ailee took Hannah aside to go for a walk. Ailee pulled out a book that she had made, illustrating the journey of their relationship. “Every page had a charm. And there was an ‘I Do’ charm that I can’t put on my bracelet until we get married,” Hannah says. They will be married on July 7.

Dating Tip: Don’t try to overanalyze everything.

Hannah, junior from Spring Hill, and Ailee, sophomore from Milwaukee, have had problems with getting into fights because they overanalyze. They say this usually happens as a result of talking all of the time and spending all of your time together. “It gets to the point where when you talk, you have nothing left to tell the person, so you just pick fights,” Ailee says.

One way to prevent overanalyzing is to pursue interests and activities, either alone or together. “Doing small mindless activities together can help. We went on a knitting kick. We felt old but it was fun,” Hannah says.

When things get tense, Ailee and Hannah suggest figuring out how to fix this before the fighting gets out of control. “We step back and try to think about what is actually going on instead of immediately getting angry,” Ailee says. “We’ve always been really good at seeing what the bigger picture is, which helps you not to overanalyze.”

• Updated May. 2, 2012 at 8:26 pm