The Mom, Wife, Dream Life

Many people probably believe that Ethan and I met, quickly started dating, got engaged immediately, and married almost right away. Little do they know, there is so much more to our story than most people bother to ask about.

You already know our story of how we met, and in case you don’t, take a brief moment and go read about it by clicking this link: Keeping Our Marriage Strong While Building Our Dream Life Together. 

Here is a timeline of events that happened up until our second wedding reception. I’ll go over the details of the few that stood out and how we still managed to make everything happen for the better.

• Just Talking
• Valentines Day
• Started Dating
• Late Night Scripture Studying
• I Knew He was THE One
• Ethan moved back home
• Senior Prom
• I graduated from High School
• Ring Shopping
• My family and I went on my “Senior Trip”
• Getting Engaged
• Engagement photos
• Clashing Dates with Ethan’s sister
• Unsure of which Temple
• Scheduling the Wedding Date
• Send out Invites
• Planning the little things (colors, theme, groomsmen, bridesmaids, etc.)
• Learning a dance
• Registering for School
• Barely found an apartment
• Packing to move
• Luncheon planning
• Reception planning
• Pulled Over
• Getting Married
• Luncheon with family/close friends
• Rug Burned…
• Wedding Night
• Stranded in the Hotel
• Starving on our “Staymoon”
• Decorated Truck
• First Reception: Last-minute change of plans
• Extended “Staymoon”
• Pack and say goodbye
• Almost got stuck in the Tetons
• Moved to Idaho
• School Starts
• Found jobs
• Ruined Suit Coat
• Second Reception in Utah

There are a lot of events in that timeline, and a lot of them did not go according to plan, but somehow we made everything work, and to be completely honest, I think it all worked out for the better in the long run anyway. Sometimes in life, we get the rare opportunity or chance for everything to go exactly as we want it to. While the majority of the time, it does the complete opposite. However, with that being said, I truly do believe that everything works according to our good, because that’s the way God intends it to be. Now, there are things in life that are not good, and things that people do that are wrong, but God is still in the works and always has a purpose behind everything. 

After Ethan and I started dating, we often called at night to talk to one another, because that was the only free time either of us had, with me still being in High School, and Him being at college all day long. In the evenings, I would usually get home from musical rehearsals, I’d eat dinner, and go to my room to get ready for bed. Ethan would call me, around 9-10 pm usually, as he worked as a custodian for the college. He worked the late-night shift, when all the students and other staff had gone home. He would call me while he worked, and while I did my homework. One night, he didn’t work, and so we decided we were going to read the scriptures together and pray together.

I don’t remember what we read exactly, but I do know that afterwards, when Ethan began to pray, I could not deny my feelings any longer. I knew what I felt in that moment as we studied the Word of God and prayed to our Heavenly Father together that I was to be with this boy forever. Ethan was going to be my husband at some point, and I could feel the truthfulness of that through the Spirit of God. 

Was My High School Prom Fun?

Getting to attend my first and final prom with Ethan was so fun! I get to tell people that I went to prom with my husband, how cool is that? I think it’s neat when I hear people married their High School sweetheart. Though Ethan wasn’t in High School with me, I would consider him to be my High School sweetheart as well, mainly because I was in High School, I fell in love with him, and I got to attend my Senior Prom with him. It was my first and only prom, because COVID-19 happened and my class wasn’t allowed to have a Junior Prom. Graduating from High School was pretty memorable for me, as I was able to have Ethan there to support and cheer me on as I crossed that stage to get my diploma. I knew my parents were beyond proud of me, but having Ethan there in addition to them meant a lot, as well as the other family members and friends who supported me. 

About 11 days after graduation, Ethan and I went on a little road trip. Our hometown doesn’t have many big stores or sites to see, so we decided to go on a fun little day getaway type of thing. We told our parents it was just to go to a fish hatchery and visit some stores, but it was to go ring shopping. Our parents had their suspicions, but we just played that off as a joke when it was the truth. The fish hatchery we did end up visiting was impressive, and a super neat experience to see together. 

My parents wanted to do something as a family vacation, but also include it as my senior trip, which I was more than okay to do! I love getting to be with family, and this was a great opportunity to do that as my “last hurrah” before I went off to college. Ethan was looking to come with us, but ended up having to work, so he wasn’t able to. After the trip, I found out that my parents were wanting to plan having Ethan show up in Texas (where our trip was) and propose to me there, that didn’t happen, again due to the scheduling of his work and all, but that’s okay, our engagement was a whole story in itself that I’ll glady share with you. 

Why Was My Engagement Story So Crazy?

The morning of June 24th, 2021, I was getting ready for our date that Ethan said he had planned for us. I kind of knew that it was going to be him proposing, but I had no idea what exactly he had planned. All I knew was that we were going to go to the forestry part of town. I had no idea where that part of town was, or what to expect, as I had never been there. Here’s some background you need to know about this story…(Ethan hadn’t been there for more than two years, and when he had gone previously, he wasn’t the one driving.) I got all dressed up in my nicest shirt and pants, because if we were going to a forest, I didn’t want bug bites, so a dress was out of the question. Anyway, Ethan picked me up from my parents’ house, and we set out on our adventure. He had gone and bought snacks for the trip too, so we wouldn’t get hungry. We started driving, and about an hour later, he says, “I don’t think we are going the right way.” So, we pulled up the handy-dandy Google Maps, looked up our destination, and followed the route. We followed it for 30-40 minutes, which led us to the most sketchy desert with weeds and cactus in the middle of nowhere. Not to mention, it told us to turn right into a huge ditch in the middle of a one-lane dirt road. This is the moment we knew we were lost. 

We drove back the way we came and headed back to our town. Ethan said he remembered where we were supposed to turn off, and so we just wound our way back to the correct road about one to two hours later. He was getting nervous as we were getting closer to our destination, but I tried not to think about it because he was going to propose, as I didn’t want to get my hopes up if he didn’t. We finally arrive to the forest, and there was nobody in sight, so we got out and walked a little ways, but decided we wanted to drive further in to the trees, so we drove up a hillish dirt road that was suppose to be for ATV’s, but since nobody was out there, we figured it would be okay, and if anyone wanted us to leave, we would. We found a little flat spot where we were able to overlook the hill/mountainside. Ethan told me all he wanted to do was watch the sunset, and I thought that was romantic. When we arrived, though, I looked at the time, and we still had four hours until sunset. Even with all the detours we had, it wasn’t long enough. I told him we could just make random videos if we wanted to. He obliged, and I was finding a dance video we could follow along to, and Ethan was getting the speaker set up. He all of a sudden started playing our love song, If You Love Her by Forest Blakk (which turned into our wedding dance song). We started slow dancing in the bed of his truck, when all of a sudden, Ethan spun me around, and he was on his knee with a beautiful ring in his hands. I said, “Yes!” and the rest of that day was like a dream come true!

It was a bit frustrating trying to determine a date for our wedding, because we originally wanted to get married in the first part of August, but come to find out Ethans sister was getting married in the first part of August, which would have been fine, but it would have been pretty overwhelming for everyone involved, so we pushed ours to the end of August instead. Not only this, but we wanted to get married in the Draper Utah Temple, but due to COVID-19 still affecting some things, we could only get married in the temple that was assigned to our stake. Funny enough, Ethan’s sister and her husband ended up getting married in Draper, so even though we didn’t get to get married in that temple, we still got to go to it. The date was then set, we were to get married August 27th, 2021, in the Billings, Montana LDS Temple.

Was the Planning of Our Wedding Smooth?

Planning began, and we chose our color scheme we wanted. I could have chosen the colors by myself, but I wanted it to be our wedding, not just mine. If that makes sense. I wanted Ethan to help me choose the colors, what flowers we wanted, what other decorations we wanted at the reception, what food we wanted to serve, etc. Those things were very important for me to share the decision-making with him. I don’t understand the weddings where all the women get to decide. The men have opinions, too. Why not let them help? It’s just as much the groom’s wedding as it is the bride’s. Anyway, it was fun getting to have family members help out so much with all the preparation and little details of it all. Ethan and I even learned the Napoleon Dynamite dance so that we could perform it at our reception. It was hilarious getting to learn it, but even more rewarding getting to share that memory.

We registered for school over at Brigham Young University-Idaho. Once that was all set in stone, we needed a place to live. We were looking for apartments, and we could hardly find any for married students. We applied to multiple apartment complexes and got waitlisted at all of them. Finally, we got the phone call that one was accepted, and we were told we got one of the last three apartments available in the whole town! Thank goodness for God and his miracles, because that was super stressful. 

Fast forward to the night before our wedding, Ethan and I were driving back into town from my parents’ house, and the speed limit goes from 55 mph to 35 mph right as you come down off a hill. Most people will not break that hard or fast right off the hill, right? You’d gradually get down to that speed. We were coming off the hill, and not even fully off the hill yet, we had red, white, and blue lights behind us. What a fun night to kick off our wedding the next day. We were given a warning, thank goodness, and off we went. I was about to tell the officer that we were getting married tomorrow, and ask to please let us off easy as a wedding gift. Thankfully, I didn’t need to do that.

Our wedding was beautiful, magical, and incredibly peaceful. We were only able to have 15 guests inside the temple with us, again due to COVID-19, which was okay! The sealing room wasn’t very big anyway, so a smaller gathering of people worked out perfectly. I got dressed in the most stunning bridal room ever, and Ethan’s mom got to help me until my mom arrived. It was a special moment I got to share with both of them. My dress was handmade by my incredible grandmother on my dad’s side. It was and still is so sentimental to me. My dress was poofy, like a princess, and had sheer sleeves. It was a plain material with a long lacy train that attached with an elastic band, so that when I got on the dance floor later at my reception, I could take the train off. Ethan and I got to see each other all dressed up before our families all arrived, and that was a precious moment to share with him as we sat in the Lords House, holding our future so close to our hearts, and being able to embrace the future that God had in store for us before the ceremony began. Then, before we knew it, we were married!

Our luncheon was quick and easy. Everyone who came to support us at the temple met us at a local LDS church, where we had sandwiches. It was fast, then everyone left and headed home, while Ethan and I drove to our “staymoon.” It was more like a staycation type of thing, as we wanted to wait to have a honeymoon. We didn’t have time for one with school starting up the next week, so we decided to just stay in a hotel in our hometown. Our wedding night was… well… a wedding night! Two young adults are living their newlywed lives. I will not be going into detail with that right now…

On our second night in the hotel, our room was on the top floor, and all of a sudden, the power went out. We went out to look, and the hotel had no lights on. They must have been doing some kind of reset or maintenance work, but the elevator didn’t work, and there were no stairs, so we were seriously stranded in our hotel, which wasn’t a problem for us, as we had nowhere to go. We were so busy with the wedding and our reception preparation that we didn’t even think about eating. So we ordered some Subway, and those were the best sandwiches we had ever had in our entire lives. When we were preparing to head to our reception, we found our truck full of balloons and painted with words of love from our friends and family. It also had snacks and drinks with it, which was a fun little treat to receive from them.

Our first reception was supposed to be held at Ethan’s grandparents’ house, and we were going to do it half inside and half outside. We had it all planned out to be the refreshments inside, while the dance floor and such were outside. It was going to be beautiful, but then it decided it was going to thunderstorm. So we quickly moved our reception to the church. It was a quick turnaround, but somehow it all worked perfectly. We didn’t have to switch rooms; we had one big room full of tables for people to sit, eat, and we had half of the room as the dance floor, with everyone being able to dance and move around freely without much restriction. Though it wasn’t what we had originally planned, it was well worth the quick change of plans, as it turned out better than anticipated. 

After our “staymoon” had ended, three days later, it was time for us to leave our home. We were starting our own life together, and we were not going to have much family close to help if needed. It took a lot of faith, courage, trust, love, and support from each other, from our families, and from our friends to move across states to a state and town we knew nothing about. We knew that our future was going to be amazing together, we just didn’t know how just yet! Almost getting stuck in the Tetons because we were pulling my car with Ethan’s truck was a bit slow, but we made it. Our apartment was perfect for us at the time, and we settled in quite nicely into our new home. 

What was the First Year of Marriage Like?

We started our life together, we started school, jobs, and figured out how our lives combined into one. We were surprised to find how easy it was to live together and be able to learn from one another. People always say that the first year of marriage is the hardest, but truly, I don’t think that was the case for us. Our first year, sure, we had little arguments here and there, as do any couple, but nothing to the extent that it felt hard. It was one of my favorite years of my life thus far, and I will forever cherish all these memories. I hope you enjoyed this little timeline of events leading up to our wedding. Life is not perfect, and probably will never be in this life, but no matter what, you have the capability and agency to recognize the impact of what good can come of it. What can be done right now to help you see that your trial, or change of plans, is going to be better in the long run? Maybe you won’t see it that way until later in life, and heck, maybe you won’t see it that way at all in this life, and that’s okay. 

Everything is not always as it seems. Just because it looks like Ethan and I got married right after we started dating, doesn’t mean we didn’t have struggles, challenges, or changes in our plans. It didn’t go the way we wanted it to, but somehow it all worked out for our good, and we were able to get to where we are now, with two beautiful little girls, a home of our own, and a marriage that strives on learning from our mistakes, and helping each other to grow and become more like Jesus Christ.

“We must let go of the life we have planned, to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

McKenna Sanders

The Mom, Wife, Dream Life Blog

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