Thirteen years ago today, I married the love of my life. I’ve told the story several times to many different people, but this is how I remember it happening and as it is our thirteenth anniversary, I figured I might as well blog about my fairytale beginning. Yes, it is only the beginning; it is not the end as we have eternity to be together and so it was the beginning of a new life - going from Me to US.
The year was 1999 and a friend of mine was having some success with finding dates via an online dating service. I had been chatting back and forth with some people via Hotmail’s single scene, but nothing ever really came to fruition. The site my friend was using was called ldssingles and I figured, that might actually work out better, because I hoped the individuals would be LDS and therefore temple worthy.
Let me insert a little tid bit here to explain. LDS is the acronym used by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Since I was a child, I had wanted nothing more than to marry in the temple for time and all eternity. This meant, I had to date and marry a worthy Priesthood holder. You can find out more about the Church and our beliefs at lds.org or mormon.org. Many people know us as the Mormons but the true name of our church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
OK, so back to the story. My friend tried to convince me for more than a month to try out this dating site, he was currently dating a young lady that he had met online and things were going well for him. I finally decided to check it out and created a profile sometime in the summer of 1999. I dated a few people, chatted with a few people online but nothing seemed to be going well. Some of the guys I dated were not living the word of wisdom or temple worthy. One guy, who I dated a second time, told me he hadn’t been divorced yet (he was dropped right then as were all those who weren’t temple worthy). Many of my friends told me I was being too picky and that it didn’t matter if I married in the temple or not, but I was not going to back down from this decision I made ever since I could remember.
Finally, I had had enough of the dating scene, the people weren’t panning out and it just didn’t seem to be going anywhere, so I didn’t pay to renew my subscription. By this time, it was well into October or November. A couple weeks after letting my subscription expire; I received an e-mail that someone had posted a note to my page. I thought that if I didn’t pay or renew my subscription that my profile would be taken down, that apparently wasn’t the case. I decided to pay for a one week period responded to the individual by telling them I was going to take my profile off at the end of the week and that he should contact me at my personal e-mail address.
He wrote back to tell me he too was thinking of taking his profile off. We chatted back and forth via e-mail for a few weeks before he gave me his phone number and asked me to call. I told him I was an old fashioned gal and I wouldn’t call him, but gave him my phone number so he could call whenever he wanted too.
I remember the first day we talked on the phone; I didn’t realize just how long we talked until well after my mother told me. Apparently, we had a lot to talk about because we were on the phone for about four or five hours. This was in December a few weeks before Christmas. We continued to communicate with e-mail and on the phone for awhile, and then we decided to meet each other. I told him I had rules regarding the meeting of individuals that I had met online and he had to be ok with these rules. I told him that it had to be a double date with a member of my family (brother or sister with their husband or wife or my little sister as my body guard). He had no problem with that and we decided to go on a double date with my sister Janet and her husband David. We were supposed to meet at my parent’s home, as I was renting from them, and go to a local steakhouse for dinner. When Janet showed up at the house, she had a bag of steaks and said we were going to have a cook-out at moms instead.
Let me interject a little tid bit into this section too. Not only was I renting from my Mom, because Dad was in Kuwait on a tour (keep in mind this was before the war), but one brother was staying in the other bedroom and one brother with his wife and two children was in the basement.
Since it was about time for Dave to show-up at the house, I just said, OK. Well, the boys were all out grilling the steaks when Dave showed up. David showed him in, through the garage and laundry room to the family room where we were all chatting and fixing the sides for dinner. David introduced us and then I introduced him to everyone else that was at the house, which was almost the entire family. My brother’s two kids wouldn’t leave him alone, they took to him like they had known him forever and that was not like them at all. Normally, they are shy around new people, but they like Dave from the beginning.
We had dinner and then stayed up taking for hours afterwards. After he left, and I think the next day because it was late, I told mom that he probably wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon. I mean, after meeting the entire family on our first date, who would right? Well, mom just smiled at me and later told me she knew he would come back because he looked at me the way dad always looked at her. Many times she said that the things he did and how he treats me reminds her of how my dad treats my mom.
OK, I was sidetracked for a bit. Well, now we are into January 2000 and Dave wants to go out again. The day he wanted to go out, I had to go to my sister’s house for her son’s birthday party, so I invited him to go with me, and then he could meet more of my family. He agreed so we spent the day with my sister and her kids. The kids took to Dave, all of them, those there for the party as well as my sister’s three. It was fun and since the next day was Sunday, I invited him to attend our meeting, especially because I was teaching in the Primary.
We saw each other at every chance, which was mostly over the weekends and occasionally he would take me to lunch. In February, the 14th to be exact, Dave was over at the house. It was getting time for him to leave and so we were sitting on the floor while he put his shoes on and he just stared at me. I said “what” like I always did and he said “I could stare into those eyes for eternity.” I said, “I can let you do that.” And so that was the proposal. We hadn’t known each other but almost two full months when we decided to get married. We talked all the time and like I said, we spent all the time we could together. After that day, when we weren’t at work, we were probably together.
I met his mother and one sister at the same time his mom met my mom and I was introduced as the fiancé. I think it shocked everyone, because it was so short a time. But we started talking about dates and things. We had planned to have the wedding in October when my father returned from Kuwait.
I must interject here again, my father was on orders to be in Kuwait and Dave had met him via chatting at night during his breaks. This was something I hadn’t really realized until the moment that I’m about to describe.
We were chatting, via webcam, with my father; Dave and I were sitting on mom’s bed holding hands when Dad said, let go of my little girl. We just laughed, because dad already knew we were getting married and we were trying to figure out when. We figured October when he came home would be best, but then my mom had to leave the room and dad asked us to close the door. I did and he said, I want you to move it up, to the first week in April. I was shocked, are you kidding me, that soon, but he said that he was going to surprise my mom by coming home early for leave and so we had to have the wedding then. He said if it’s right, why wait. So I looked at Dave and we both shrugged and said, OK. Then I had to figure out how I was going to convince my mom that I was going to get married without my father present.
Things started happening really fast after that. My sister had created my bouquet; I think she actually started it when I started dating. My mother made my dress and all the while, whenever the wedding came up I had to conceal the fact that I had a secret. A couple times my mom had to stop talking because tears would come to her eyes knowing my father wouldn’t be present. We convinced her that the only opening at the temple was the date we chose and so we had to do it then and that dad understood and didn’t want us to wait. When we were getting our recommend interviews to be sealed for time and all eternity, the Bishop asked me if I couldn’t wait for my father, when I said I couldn’t lie to him and told him dad would be there but that it was a secret. I could see the relief and joy in his face after that.
It was really hard to keep the secret from my mom, I had never done anything like it before and so a few times when we started to talk about the wedding, I had to leave the room and I hated even mentioning it because I knew it was hard for her not to have dad there.
The day my dad was scheduled to land, Dave and I picked him up from the airport. We drove him to the town meeting, because my mom was the town clerk and she was taking the minutes. Dave and I stepped into the back and sat down; mom glanced at us and didn’t think anything of it. Then when they had a break, I motioned to the Mayor and he said that we had a special visitor from the Far East. Mom glanced up for a second then went back to her work, and then she stopped and looked up again, because my dad had stepped into the room when the Mayor said he was visiting and started walking towards the front. Mom started crying and jumped up. I think I even started crying at this time. She was so flustered that the Mayor excused her from the rest of the meeting. She couldn’t see through the tears to take more notes.
After we got them home, she told me she couldn’t believe we had pulled this off and that she wasn’t going to forgive me for lying all this time. (I think she has though, it was a good trick).
Dave and I were then sealed for time and all eternity on the 5th of April 2000. Though our courtship was short, our marriage has been wonderful and we are very happy and plan on growing old and spending eternity together as one.
We did a lot of kissing.
Dave decided to shove the cake in my face and it ended up my nose.
Our first dance together
Walking down the stairs from the original front door.
I call this one dreamy eyes.
More kissing...
This was his Mom's favorite, leaning on the temple.
Again, our kissing at the doors.
Stretching for each other.
