So there I was, standing in the frozen food aisle at the Rainbow Foods store in Uptown Minneapolis, staring at a towering stack of Totino’s Party Pizzas. You know the ones—questionably cheap, suspiciously square, but undeniably delicious. There’s something about the crispiness of that crust. I crave it. I devour it. I can afford it.
It was a simple plan: buy a cartload of these bad boys and prepare for my epic, solo movie and video game marathon weekend. No shame.
I loaded up my cart—at least 30 pizzas deep. Hey, the 10 for 10 deal only came so often back in those days. People were giving me looks like, “Is this guy throwing a rager or single-handedly feeding an army of college students?” But I pressed on to the checkout line, where destiny, as it turns out, was waiting.
The cashier, a totally normal person except for the way she greeted me with a, “Whoa. That’s a lot of party pizzas. Big event?”
“Uh… no,” I said awkwardly. “Just… love pizza.”
Then, out of nowhere, she smiled and said, “Can I come and we can make it a party?”
I froze. This was clearly a joke, right? But something about the way she said it—half-laughing, half-serious—made me pause.
“Sure,” I joked back. “You can bring napkins.”
”Paper towels work, right?” she answered while scanning pizza after pizza.
”Depends, I like Bounty, no cheaping out.” I replied as we laughed together.
“So, no party, you were just prepping for the apocalypse?” She sarcastically wondered.
I shrugged. “Little bit of both. I figure if society collapses, I’ll be the guy with all the pizza.”
With every beep of a pizza going through the scanner, I could feel us getting closer. By the 17th pizza, we were one upping each other with which apocalypse/disaster movies we had repeat watched more times (I had definitely seen Twister more times than her, obviously, she just couldn’t accept that fact), and by the 25th pizza, we were basically planning our lives together.
Then came the final pizza scan. The cashier stopped, held the last box up like it was The Lion King, and said, “This is it—the pizza that seals our fate.” I half-expected them to ask for a pizza dowry. But instead, she wrote her number on my receipt, handed it to me with her kind and beautiful smile and said, “I’m holding you to that invite.”
Fast-forward to our first pizza date. I showed up with a single party pizza, thinking it’d be a cute callback to our meeting. She showed up with three. “I didn’t want to assume one pizza would be enough,” she said with a wink. I knew right then and there: this person was serious about party pizza—and about us.
Over the next few months, pizza became our love language. Whenever we had a minor argument—like over who left the toothpaste uncapped—I’d show up with a pizza, and everything was instantly fine. Forget flowers, just bring pepperoni. That’s how I knew it was real.
When it came time to propose, I wanted to do something meaningful, but also…well, us. So I got this genius idea. I had a jeweler make a custom engagement ring box that looked like a mini Party Pizza package. Inside? A pizza-shaped ring. I got down on one knee, held up the box, and said, “Will you be the pepperoni to my cheese?”
She burst out laughing—thankfully—and said, “I dough!”
Now, let’s talk about the wedding. We thought about going fancy, but every time we talked about “elegant” or “classy,” one of us would inevitably say, “Yeah, but what about party pizzas?” Eventually, it clicked: Why fight who we are? We knew the guests were expecting a fancy dinner—three courses, filet mignon, the works. So when we rolled in with a catering team carrying giant stacks of party pizzas and toaster ovens, the confusion was palpable.
During cocktail hour, one of my aunts, clutching a glass of champagne, leaned in and asked, “Honey, is this a joke? You’re serving… freezer pizza?”
“Not just any freezer pizza,” I said, winking. “The Totino’s party pizza. It’s the very symbol of love. Everyone knows that, you’ve never heard that before?” She was either speechless or agreed, I couldn’t tell.
Meanwhile, my new in-laws were trying to be supportive but couldn’t hide their confusion. “You’re serious about this pizza thing, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “We’re committed. Like, ‘frozen for life’ committed.”
Then there was my buddy Randy, who was convinced we had a second, “real” meal waiting somewhere. “You’re just messing with us, right? The real food’s coming later?”
“Nope,” I said, chomping down on a slice of combination style. “Welcome to the rest of our lives.”
As the night wore on, people embraced the weirdness. Guests started stacking slices like hors d’oeuvres, dunking them into fancy bowls of marinara as if they were caviar. The DJ announced, “This next slow dance is brought to you by Totino’s,” and handed us a couple of pieces instead of a champagne toast. We slow danced while holding pizza, because of course we did.
And to top it all off, the wedding cake? Oh, it was no ordinary cake. It was a tower of stacked party pizzas, each layer held together with mozzarella “frosting.” The guests gasped as we cut the first slice, but by then they were in on the joke. We fed each other pizza instead of cake, and somehow it felt… perfect.
Years later, people still ask, “Why the party pizzas at the wedding?” And we just look at each other, smile, and say, “It’s a love story—you wouldn’t understand.”
Then, things took a turn I never saw coming. My wife—my partner in pizza, my soulmate in frozen foods—was rushed into emergency surgery due to complications with her pregnancy. It all happened so fast, I barely had time to think before they wheeled her away. I stood by her side, my heart pounding, as doctors and nurses buzzed around us, faces grim.
She looked pale, but somehow still managed to smile at me. As they prepared for the cesarean, I realized that this might be our last moment together. The thought hit me like a gut punch, and suddenly, I was fighting back tears. I squeezed her hand, unsure if I’d ever be able to again.
Then, with a trembling voice, she said, “Honey, before they start…I need to tell you something.”
I leaned in, my breath catching. Was this some confession? Some secret she’d been holding onto all these years?
She smiled, her eyes glistening. “That day…when you bought all those party pizzas…I didn’t have to ring them up one by one.”
I blinked, not understanding.
“I could’ve scanned just one and multiplied it,” she continued, her voice cracking with emotion. “But I didn’t. Because…I knew. I knew right then I wanted to know you. I wanted every moment with you, even if it was just scanning a mountain of frozen pizzas.”
I broke. Tears streamed down my face, not knowing if this would be the last thing I’d ever hear her say. I clutched her hand tighter. What had started as a joke about party pizzas had turned into something deeper—a reminder of the fleeting beauty in even the simplest moments.
Then the doors swung shut, and I was left in the sterile hallway, praying that our love story wouldn’t end there.
Hours passed like years. But when the doctors came out, the weight lifted. The surgery went fine. Our son—tiny, fragile—had to stay in the NICU for what felt like an eternity, but he pulled through. He became our whole world.
And as life slowly returned to normal, we welcomed a second son—another slice of joy in our unconventional love story.
We never told anyone about that conversation in the operating room or even the true reasons for the party pizzas at our wedding. But every time we make party pizzas, I look at her, and we both remember that love can be measured in frozen square pizzas, scanned one by one, when every second together counts.
The end.
Note: this was mostly a work of fiction I wrote one day while hungry. Inspired by some real events. I won’t tell which. This post is not sponsored by Totino’s Party Pizzas a registered trademark of General Mills in Minnesota. Thank you for all the great Party Pizzas. As for the Hollywood studios, we’d like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan to play us in the romcom. Well, older us I guess. I might be open to Hugh Jackman.