My Marriage Meme

I started this a while ago and I guess I never posted it! So here goes!

1. Where did you meet your husband? The first time I actually met Tyler was at a Family Home Evening activity at the Institute in Berkeley. I didn't expect much because I already didn't like him. See, I was in charge of keeping our Missionary board up-to-date which meant asking the guys on missions to send us a short letter and photo to place on a big map of the world. It was really cute. And wouldn't you know -- Tyler was the ONLY missionary who ignored us. So I thought he was a jerk. Yet I was surprised at how cute he was when I actually met him and that made me hate him even more.

2. What was the first thing you said to him? I think it was something like, "Oh, you are the jerk who ignored our letter and acted like he was too good for our wall." Seriously, I think it was something like that.

3. Where was your first date? Kiss? HA. That's a funny story actually. The date part -- not the kiss part. The kiss part is sweet. So Tyler and I had become pretty good friends in a short amount of time and he called me one night in October and asked me if I wanted to go shopping with him in San Francisco because he needed a new pair of dress pants and a belt or something. Since we were already friends I thought we were just going to go hang out, like friends, no pressure, definitely NOT a date. Well, apparently Tyler was planning an ambush date (he will argue completely against this fact of course) because it wasn't long until he was trying to put his arm around me. I shrugged him off at first, to test him, and he went right back for more. So yeah, our first date was an ambush. But I didn't complain too much, we cuddled all the way home on the BART and while we watched a movie with some friends (secretly of course). Actually, our first date is one of the fondest memories I have with Tyler!

4. Did you have a long or short courtship? Way WAY short. Shorter than I ever would have imagined, ever. I always said that I could never be one of those girls that gets engaged or married after only a few months, that it would have to be at least a few years. Well, yeah, that went out the window. Tyler and I dated from October through December and got engaged in the beginning of January, married at the end of June. We knew we wanted to get married after a few weeks though (so crazy I know) but he's been the man of my dreams ever since!

5. Where did you get engaged? Well, Tyler proposed to me in the same spot on campus where we had our first kiss. This light post right by the library. It was wonderful. I didn't cry or anything, I was way to excited. I had been waiting and waiting for him to do it! We decided we wanted to get married a while before we actually got engaged and had shopped and picked out the ring together and I was dying with anticipation for it to actually become official. He got down on one knee and asked me (I think he was a little nervous).

6. Where did you get married? We were sealed in the Oakland Temple on June 27th, 2003 in Oakland, California.

7. How did the reception go? Not so well. It was hard with all the stress of the day to enjoy it. The day we got married it was SUPER HORRIBLY hot. Record breaking hot. There was a lot of tension with all the families and that added to a lot of stress, plus the heat -- it was a recipe for disaster. The building we had our reception in was the Berkeley Institute (Phoebe Hearst's mansion). It's a gorgeous building and we assumed it had air conditioning because it never got very hot in the building (and we could have sworn that cold air came out of the vents during church on Sundays freezing us to death). So on the day we got married it was REALLY hot in the building and we thought the AC had broken. The bishop called a repair guy to come and look at it and the guy came back down from the roof and told us that the building didn't have air conditioning. We were all shocked. The bishop and his counselors raced home and grabbed as many fans as they could to try and cool it off. We were married in the morning and our reception was in the afternoon and by the time we got there my bouquet had died, the icing on our cake had melted (despite the valiant efforts of our baker with his mini fans trying to cool it off) and most of our guests and wedding party were miserable. It wasn't at all what I had planned or hoped for. I was glad when it was over. I did appreciate all the efforts of everyone who helped though!!

8. How was the honeymoon? It was wonderful. I love vacations in general with Tyler, but our honeymoon was great. We spent the first night in the fabulous Claremont in Berkeley. The room they sent us to first was beautiful, but the air conditioner had broken (because it was so hot that the system got overloaded -- it had never been that hot before). So they upgraded us to this amazing room with Bay views, a HUGE jacuzzi tub -- it was AMAZING!!! We spent a fortune on an amazing dinner in our room, too. We had a great breakfast and then got on a plane and flew to Las Vegas to spend a night before we drove to Zion National Park to stay in a wonderful hotel that Tyler's aunts and uncles had given us as a wedding gift. Zion's was beautiful (really hot -- no surprise there) and it was so nice to have so much uninterrupted time together. After a few days there we drove back to Vegas, saw a Blue Man Group show (I was gunning for Celine but she was sold out) which was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. We had plans to go to Great America (Six Flags in San Jose) but I got sick and we had to cut the last couple days short. But we had a wonderful time together.

So that was fun!! I'm tagging Lauren, Molly, Brooke, and Tiffany.