A Happily Ever After Story

So back in July I posted what has been my most popular post to date. It was Dave and my Love Story up till that point in our lives. This is a continuation of that blog post. If you didn't see it you can click here and check it out before continuing on :)

I suppose you could say as conventional, traditionalists that we are at heart, our relationship has been anything but conventional and traditional. Starting with the beginning and ending with now and the future! I ended our story with our engagement at the end of July (really the end of June). Little did we understand how much our lives would change within a short expanse of time.

I had already begun to plan and do fun things with my friends and family to start planning the wedding I'd always imagined from the time I was a kid. In fact, my mom had drug me into a wedding dress store ("Just for fun, just to look around!") and while I did protest (I really, truly did) we went. I tried things on but felt that I needed those people I wanted most there, there. So we scheduled an appointment and came back. Needless to say my idea of not even looking for a wedding dress until January turned into me purchasing a dress that night. I wish that I could post pictures because it is absolutely beautiful, but there are people who can't see it yet that will just have to wait! At that time I didn't have the store credit card with me and was unable to actually finish the purchase.

That week Dave was in Tooele running the camp here and so we were able to hang out. At that point we still hadn't heard if he'd be in Salt Lake for the fall season and assumed, like most people would, that no news was good news. Come July 31st, Wednesday of that week our entire world somewhat shattered. That afternoon I had called and paid for my dress and we had talked with Dave's sister and she was very generously going to donate the money for us to pay our down payment on our venue (Gardner Village's the Gathering Place). We were soo excited for the time to come and couldn't imagine anything that would derail that. That is until he received a call from his Regional Director.

The news he delivered still tastes bitter to this day. He told us that they wouldn't have a place for Dave in Salt Lake for the fall because of the age bracket of kids they needed coaching. This meant Dave had 2 options. Either a) go to the east coast for the fall and then come home only to leave 2 weeks later for home or b) not go to the east coast and stay here, but with the inability to work due to his Visa being through the company. The problem with this was that the bad news just kept building. Now because of the lack of children in the right age bracket for Dave to coach in the fall, it meant there would be a huge possibility of not getting work in Salt Lake for next spring 2014. If you haven't kept up that would mean that we would see each other for 2 weeks at the end of October/beginning of November and then there was the very high potential to not see each other until our wedding....in 2015!

I don't think I remember crying more than I did over the next couple of hours. I don't think I'd ever seen Dave cry that much either. We were both messes. We poured over the possibilities. We talked about how much he didn't want to go to the east coast because of past experience. We talked about how we were supposed to pay for the ring that we'd planned fall work to pay off. We talked about the inability on both our parts to not see each other until spring 2015. We talked about getting married now so that we could just be together. We talked about the assumptions people would make if we made that decision. We cried.

We emailed his main boss and told them he wouldn't be going. The reply was that it wasn't to the east coast so much as to Cincinnati, Ohio. We discussed getting married. Again we discussed how much we didn't want to do that. We went in the next day to talk to the courthouse about options. With the help of my mom and Mike as well as Dave's parents and sister we came to the conclusion that there really was no good option to make everyone happy. With the thought that we may not see each other for almost 2 years, we decided to get married.

Those of you who know us know that this was the right decision to come to. Our relationship is based on so much more than the little things. It's real and true and to this day we have no doubts that, while a hard decision, it was the right one to make.

I know now the questions that I can literally see forming in all of those of you who are reading this minds. The next step in our future was to apply for Dave to stay here permanently. To this day, I'd say that it's the most intense process I've ever been involved in in my entire life. We spent 6 hours that Saturday pouring over forms and filling them out and printing them out and gathering evidence. We still didn't send anything until the end of the month.

August 6, 2013 we were married at the courthouse. Was it how I had planned? No. Was it just as amazing of an experience? Yes. We both made the decision that only close family would know about it (and that's not even my entire family, please before you protest, know that until about 2 weeks ago my own brother didn't even know). We were able to Skype his parents and sister from Scotland and it was about as unconventional as you can get! We both decided that we would let everyone else know when Dave returned from Cincinnati.

Just because we were married didn't mean we got to spend time with each other. We didn't truly see each other until the end of the month and then he left for Cincinnati on September 1st. If any of you could ever know how hard it is to be newly married and not even get to spend most of that time together you'd understand where we've been. Cincinnati was hard. It was hard to have him away. It was hard to only get to Skype or talk on the phone. It was hard having my now husband gone. I don't know how people go longer lengths!

Now that he's back and we've got all of our forms in for the Green Card (it literally has taken this long to get things in) we are still in a waiting game for that. We're looking at the least 4-5 months for that to go through. However I can't tell you just how excited we are to be back together. We've been living our lives on pause for so long now that it's so ridiculously exciting to look forward to pushing the play button!

For those of you who are interested, we are still planning an official ceremony (although more like a ring ceremony). The date has changed from April. I will let you all know when we confirm with my grandparents but at this point in time we're looking at getting married in Afton, Wyoming in 2015.

I hope you all know that if we didn't personally tell you it was not an affront to you, we decided together that we weren't going to tell everyone until Dave was back home, it was hard enough being away from each other without the added stress of questions and hurt feelings for a decision we made in the interest of our own happiness. We love all of you and the support that everyone has shown us. We hope that at this point in time you can support us in what is surely a very, very bright future! We are so excited with all the possibilities that are yet to come for us!

I will be changing my name on Facebook on our 3 month anniversary, November 6th. If you've read this show us your support by liking this blog post.

We are so excited for our future, please join us in that excitement :)

August 6, 2013 :)