As I mentioned in last week's post (yesterday), Kelly and I were
engaged for two months. Kelly and I were both in a situation where we
were both ready to get married and once we chose each other to be
married to we just made it happen.
I'm not sure how it
usually happens, but Kelly and I pretty well took care of all of the
arrangements. We decided to change all of the things we thought were
customary that we didn't necessarily like and do things our way, because
it was our day. This did cause some inconvenience for some of our family members that didn't live near the Salt Lake Temple, but it was our day.
Kelly was working odd shifts at Primary Children's
Medical Center at the time. She'd work some days and some nights. That
is just how they did it on the surgical floor where where she was
working as a nurse. This made for some interesting planning sessions.
We sent quite a few emails back and forth. Kelly only worked three days
a week, but they were odd hours and 12-hour shifts. This meant that
though she might only work three days, she would be recovering another
few days. If it was after a night shift she'd sleep through the day and
then try to get herself back on a normal schedule for the next shift.
Why they allowed the nurses to work this way I do not know. You'd think
they'd have them either work night or day shifts, but it wasn't that
way. It actually ended up causing Kelly to have some weird heart
rhythms a few years after we were married to the point that she quit
working at Primary's even though she loved it there.
These
odd shifts and odd hours of togetherness made for some interesting
times and I think caused quite a bit of anxiety inside of Kelly. As we
were courting and spending every waking hour together that we could and
then fitting in sleep between these weird schedules, Kelly had some
rough times. I know her dad helped out quite a bit and she spent quite a
bit of time in the temple. For some reason, I didn't experience any of
this and I was pretty calm and supportive through the whole thing.
Kelly might tell you otherwise, but that's how I remember it. I don't
recall this causing any question on if we'd get married, it was more
just anxiety of that we were going to get married and it was for real.
Kelly
and I made most of the arrangements for our wedding. We picked out a
little quaint diner that one of my work friends had told me about for
our wedding dinner. Everyone that was invited to our ceremony and a few
other family members were invited to the dinner at Em's Cafe on Capitol
Hill. There was seating for about 50 people and we had the place
packed. We arranged for our flowers from a little floral shop in
Sugarhouse. They took excellent care of us. We decided to only do the
ceremony on our wedding day as we wanted to enjoy the day. Everyone we
had spoken to did the wedding and luncheon and a reception on one day
and they were worn out at the end of the day. After the mid-morning
ceremony, we did pictures with everyone that was there and a few of just
us, then we left town for our honeymoon in Logan, Utah and Afton,
Wyoming. We did a reception at our home a week or so later after we
returned.
That brings up another interesting thing as far as wedding
preparations go. We both we pretty established in good jobs with our
undergraduate degrees completed. We both didn't want to rent, so we
also decided we'd be buying a house in those few months as we prepared
for a wedding. This wasn't really a stressful thing, though I'm sure
there was more stress than I remember. The biggest thing was we knew
the type of neighborhood we wanted to live in and we thought we knew the
only neighborhoods that existed. The tough part was that those
neighborhoods were all well out of our price range. I remember after
browsing through most of the neighborhoods at $400k and $500k homes that
were two and three bedrooms homes we both were a little frustrated. We
actually came across a small home in the mid $300s that we were set on
figuring out that if we both stayed employed full-time we'd be able to
make it happen. That's when reality set in and we were able to come
back to Earth and realize that we wanted Kelly to be at home with our
kids when they came into the picture and we didn't want to be strapped
to something that would keep us that tight.
It was near a
miracle when we drove up 1200 South in Bountiful one night. We were
both talking. Mid-sentence we both stopped. I stopped the car in the
middle of the road. I got out of the car and grabbed a flier in front
of a for sale by owner home. It was a tiny home with huge trees and it
was so cute. I don't recall if we ever pulled the car out of the road,
but we looked through the windows and as we were on the phone with the
person selling it, told him we'd give him what he was asking. It was so
perfect. It wasn't scary at all. Whether it came from shock of all of
the other homes we had seen than finding this one at under half the
price, or if it was where we needed to be it doesn't matter. Everything
worked out perfectly and smooth just as our relationship had done.
So,
there you have it. Met, engaged, married, bought a home in four months
time. Crazy, eh. Crazy, but perfect. I think this is the type of
fairy tale that should be in a book someday. Forget all the drama that
Hollywood thinks we need to have in our lives, this is for real.
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