OUR STORY

HOW WE MET:

Fall 2007: I was going to BYU for my second semester and Braden and I met through a friend. Braden had just gotten home from the Philippines a couple months ago with his mission buddy who was in my FHE group at the time and they hung out a lot. We were out with a couple of mutual friends and hung out at the mall and watched a movie (Michael Clayton.. remember that one?) and after a couple days, I noticed he had found and messaged me on Facebook, asking if I wanted to go to the mall with him again. I did (what girl could say no to shopping, right?), and we had a really good time. He took us to dinner at Cafe Rio and we had drinks at Starbucks afterward. He later called and asked me out, officially, for rock climbing the following week, which I almost stood him up for because of a time crunch (oops!), but he waited an hour and I finally made it and it was awesome. We dated on and off for the next month or so and by the time Christmas rolled around, we were pretty close and I jokingly asked if he wanted to go to Atlanta during winter break. To my surprise, he said yes and he flew out and met my whole family (cousins and all) and got teased and had to eat a lot of Korean food. What a stud, right? Right. Because we've been inseparable ever since.

THE ENGAGEMENT:

December 19, 2008: It was a plain day, like any other. Braden had worked all day at Circuit City and I was bumming around at home, playing with my puppy all day. He asked if I wanted to go somewhere for dinner and I replied, "Eh, it's cold outside. We can make something here." He looked slightly uncomfortable and pushed the subject until I relented to go. We decided to go to Salt Lake City and see the Temple Square Lights that had just been set up. We ate at The Cheesecake Factory, one of my favorite restaurants back then and a romantic spot for us, because we went there for every special occasion we could. After dinner, we saw the lights and headed home. When we got off the exit for Pleasant Grove, I asked him why we were getting off so early and he said he just wanted to drive through his hometown. We drive through PG all the time for memory lane's sake so I thought nothing of it. He pulled up to his elementary school and we walked around and got to the playground that we had a big fight the year before but decided there not to break up. We played in the snow for a bit and finally I sat in the swings while Braden pushed me. Then Braden started talking about how excited he was for Christmas and hoped we could spend every Christmas together. He turned and faced me on the swings and knelt down on one knee in the snow and told me how much he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and then asked me to marry him. It was so overwhelming, the snow falling everywhere, stars out, the temple lights excursion, the proposal that I wasn't expecting for a while, that I started running around the swing set and crying. Once I calmed down a bit (I'm sure Braden was freaking out internally at this point), I said (still crying), "Yes, I'll freaking marry you!" And that's how we got engaged!

THE WEDDING:

Preparing for the wedding was one of the more stressing times in our lives. We were living in Austin, TX the summer of 2010 for work and were working full time and taking summer classes while trying to plan a wedding that would happen a couple days after we got home. We had to book everything by phone and online pictures, get a dress off the rack that would fit me (finally found a corseted one my mom and I had to cinch tight as hard as we could to fit my size 00 body), and get all the decor online and only picture how it would look. We spent hours designing, scrapping, and redesigning the invitations, and scrapping it again, and finally going with a simple white invitation card with a photo insert, all tied with blue ribbon. Blue ribbon I'm sure we cleaned out Austin of (we went to 3 separate Michael's several times and bought out all they had).

Marriage at the Logan Temple: the ceremony was so touching I could not stop crying at the end (and I'm not a sappy crier, only a sad one) and knowing that my friends and family made such a huge sacrifice to drive all the way up to Logan, some of them missing school or jobs, or my family doing all of that and flying from the east coast the day before! Our photographer was a dream to work with and is so talented and luckily some other couple cancelled or we wouldn't have been able to get her that weekend at all.

Reception at Cedar Hill Golf Club: Like all weddings, there seemed a never ending wave of situations, either the temple being under construction or the highways shutting down from Salt Lake to Provo, etc,etc. But thanks to the kindness of family members willing to pick up the cake, or the decor, or the chairs, or the food, and help set it all up, we barely made it to the reception 15 minutes before it started and got it all ready. I am so grateful for those people that didn't even need asking but kicked off their shoes and pitched in!

The wedding was a success though, and at times I wish I could change little details here and there but overall I'm extremely proud of the wedding we put together all by ourselves and handled every last detail. At the end of the night, Braden and I were starving, exhausted and drove to Park City for our honeymoon, where we shopped, hiked, rode the ski lift, ate at super fancy shmancy places (where we discovered our palettes weren't ready for fancy shmancy food), and went horseback riding. Oh, and thanks for all the "Just Married" glitter in our car. Years later, we still have it.