Here’s how Juliet Simms and Andy Biersack met before Warped Tour

There’s no denying that Juliet Simms and Andy Biersack have the most mesmerizing relationship in alternative rock. We’ve all heard the famous story: Juliet Simms and Andy Biersack met on Vans Warped Tour and fell in love before tying the knot in April 2016. And while Warped Tour romances are nothing to stick your nose up at (we’re looking at you, Travie McCoy and Katy Perry), Juliet Simms and Andy Biersack’s relationship dates much further back than 2011. And their marriage, too.

While chatting with Juliet Simms for her debut Alternative Press cover, she offered the details on how the pair really met and got married. She suggested grabbing a cup of coffee and getting comfortable, and we couldn’t agree more. After hearing all of the details from Juliet Simms herself on how their relationship blossomed, we’re more convinced than ever that these rock ’n’ roll darlings should have their own rom-com special on Netflix.

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How did you and Andy first meet?

JULIET SIMMS: I was on tour in 2009 with my band Automatic Loveletter, and we had a day off. We went to the movies, and we went to see one of the new Halloween movies. I watched it, loved it and it scared the ever-living shit out of me. And I thought it was so fantastic, and I was especially enamored with the lead actress’ performance. I just thought that she was beautiful and cool and did such a great job.

This is back in the day when I used to tweet every single thought that popped into my brain, and I just posted out a thought. You know, “Just saw the new Halloween movie and I thought the main actress was phenomenal. What a great horror movie.” And then she tweeted back at me a couple of hours later, and she’s like, “Holy shit, I’m such a fan of your band” and “This means so much to me” so on and so forth. Long story short, we start DMing, and we become Twitter friends, and we make plans to have dinner when I get back to L.A. and I’m off the road.

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I’m at the restaurant with my then-boyfriend and in walks Scout [Taylor-Compton], the actress. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, it’s so good to meet you,” and her boyfriend comes trailing in after her, which happened to be Andy Biersack, and at the time I was just like, “Whoa, this guy is cool looking.” I was immediately taken aback by his aesthetic, the makeup, the big black long hair, the leather, the New York Dolls-esque, KISS, rock ’n’ roll dude that just walked in. I thought he was so cool looking, and we had dinner, and it was all great. Everybody is getting along. [I] love Scout. She’s a really interesting girl and super talented. Andy and I had nothing but everything in common: touring, writing, recording, being in a band and our love for music. Right off the bat, I was like, “Wow, what a great buddy. This is awesome.”

As this year progressed, Scout and I probably hung out a total of three or four more times. In that time period, Andy was always there, and we started to become friends. That’s it. Nothing weird, no secret feelings, nothing like that whatsoever.

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After falling out of touch with Taylor-Compton over the course of the year, she consequently also lost touch with Biersack, despite the couple separating. But just as Simms had rid her mind of Biersack to focus on writing and recording as she geared up for Warped Tour, it was none other than yours truly that put him right back in her path.

By this time, I’m gearing up to go on Vans Warped Tour, and I am sitting at the Hurley Studio out in Orange County, and I’m recording an acoustic album there a couple of weeks before the tour. I’m sitting in the lobby area, and on the table in front of me is Andy’s cute little mug on the cover of AP magazine.

I’m sitting there looking at this magazine thinking, “This motherfucker got past me so fast.” But at the time, this is before Black Veil Brides really blew up. And so Automatic Loveletter had a little bit of a one-up on him just because his band hadn’t blown up yet like it did. And I’m sitting there looking at this magazine like, “I’m going to have to deal with this guy on tour this summer.” [Laughs.]

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Cut to a couple of weeks later. I’m on the tour about three weeks in, [and] I’m walking through the grounds, and I see this group of kids just screaming bloody murder. I’m like, “Who’s coming on next?” So I walk over and I get to the backstage area, and I see five dudes with long black hair and so much makeup. I was like, “Oh, there they are, Black Veil Brides.” I wanted to go onstage, and I wanted to distract Andy. I wanted to just look at him and let him be aware that I was there. And I was like, “This guy, he comes on this tour and just takes over. I’ve done this shit a thousand times.” It was such a petty part of my personality back then. So I go onstage, I’m [at the] side stage standing there, they’re performing and they’re singing. I’m standing there with my arms crossed just being a little bitch, and he looked over at me and like within a half a millisecond, all of the ill-will feelings dissipated. He smiled at me, and I instantly melted. I just melted. The entire performance I was standing there, [and] we were just staring at each other. The entire 35-minute set. It was so bizarre. There was so much communication with just our eyes. I left before they finished because I didn’t know what was going on.

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The next day, I’m playing my set on the Ernie Ball stage, and there’s like 40 kids there. I was on the tour acoustically with big, huge rock bands to compete with. But I’m performing, and I look over at the side stage, [and] Danny Worsnop is on my side stage with his girlfriend at the time, and he’s photographing me. I was like, “Cool, why is the singer of Asking Alexandria taking pictures of me on my dinky little stage in front of 40 fans?” So I finished my set and got offstage. While I was standing backstage, Danny came up to me, and he was like [in English accent], “Oh, yeah, I’ve been a fan of your band since high school. Automatic Loveletter really made an impact on me.” I was like, “Oh, that’s so flattering. Thank you so much.” And he said, “We’re having a little bit of a party tonight on my bus. Would you like to come hang out?” And I was like, “Yes, absolutely. I’ll see you later tonight.”

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I go and pack up all my shit, pack up my tent, get the day done and make my way over to bus. And I get to Danny’s bus, I knock and they open the door. I walk on, and there’s no party. There are only three people on the bus. And it’s Danny, his girlfriend and, on the other lounge, Andy. I look at everybody. I was like, “Hi, hello,” and Andy grabs a bottle of whiskey, and he goes “You and me, we’re going to talk.”  

So we went outside, and we ended up talking for like eight hours, until the bus call. I think the bus call was really late that night. It was like 4 a.m. We just sat in the grass drinking whiskey and talking about everything and really rekindling the first friendship spark that we had struck up initially. So that was a very life-changing night for me. The next day, Andy tweeted at me, and then we were DMing.

Then the following day, he asked me out on a Warped Tour date to walk around the grounds and talk, and it was magical. We walked around, it started raining, and then the next thing I knew, we were just so in love, immediately. It was immediate. I think three or four days later, I moved on to his bus, and he asked me to move in with him. That was it for us. It was very magical.

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Then, this is something that we haven’t really talked about, but we eloped secretly. He proposed to me like three months after we got together, and of course I said yes. We decided to do this before I started shooting the live portion of the show The Voice. One night we were sitting at this really quaint little cute french restaurant in L.A., and we were talking about the future and how we want to live and when we wanted to get married and all of that. I said, “Well, when do you want to get married?” And he looked at me and said, “I will marry you. I’ll marry you, tonight.” I was like, “Really, where would you like to do it?” And he was like, “Let’s go to Vegas.”

So we picked up his cousin Joe, and we drove to Vegas, and we got there at like 5 a.m. on a Sunday, and we went to their little white chapel. And they’re like, “Well, that’s not how it works, guys. You need a marriage license.”

We waited for hours for the courthouse to open so we could go and get a marriage license, which we did. And then Joe out of the blue fell sick and had a stomach bug and couldn’t leave the hotel. He had to just lay down and go to sleep. So we lost our witness and then the little white chapel was like, “Don’t worry, we have a photographer. That can be your witness.” Well, the photographer fell asleep on the front lawn of the little white chapel because he was drunk. So we ended up doing the ceremony with me, Andy and the clergy person.

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It turns out, though, it’s not a complete marriage when you don’t have witnesses. I mean, you don’t have someone to sign a witness form. I didn’t know getting married had so much paperwork. [Laughs.] There’s a lot of shit you gotta fucking sign. We thought we were married for years. And it wasn’t actually until fans started uncovering that we might be secretly married, but that it wasn’t official, and it wasn’t complete. That’s when we decided to have the big wedding that we had in 2016. We had our family, and it was a big thing because we weren’t actually really married. And for years, we thought we were. 

So, if you had actually been married, if it had actually gone through in Vegas, what would your anniversary date have been?

Our anniversary date would have been March. I want to say March 12. It was in March. I know that to be true because it was like eight or nine days before I went and moved into the hotel to shoot the show that I was on. There are so many dates to remember at this point. Now we both made an agreement like, “It’s cool. We don’t have to remember anything anymore except our birthdays and our wedding anniversary.”

Your official wedding anniversary.

Our official wedding anniversary, yes. We kept it quiet for a very long time. I think at this point, it’s time to let the cat out of the bag. [Laughs.]

Well, I have a couple of questions about Warped Tour. First of all, what an amazing Danny impression you have.

He’s such a character. Danny was at our wedding. He’s been a friend of ours for many years. And He’s just one of my absolute favorite characters. He’s so eccentric, and he’s so out there. I find that there is just something that maybe only I experience when I meet somebody with such a rich personality. You can absorb it so fully because it’s so dense. I just think he’s a wonderful person.

He absolutely is. You’ve mentioned that there was this day at Warped Tour where you were side stage, and you were staring at each other. And then you had this magical night together where you just stayed up all night talking. Where would you pinpoint knowing that Andy was the one? 

Oh, I would say I knew Andy was the one the third day we hung out. Here’s the thing: People’s intuition and gut feelings are normally right. Normally, you should follow that feeling. And I think the first two days, I was like, “Oh, wait a minute. I thought I knew what love was.” I was [in] Automatic Loveletter. I considered myself a professional when it came to being a hopeless romantic. That was my gift: being in love and singing about it. When I met him the first two days of us hanging out, I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t put my finger on it because I thought I knew what love was, and I didn’t.

It was the first time he kissed me. I could’ve said right then and there, “I think I love you,” but I didn’t want to scare him. It was about five days later that we told each other we were in love. He said it first when we were in Long Island on Warped Tour, and we shouted it at the sky like a couple of psychopaths. It was real, within the first week. We knew we were in love.