Love Story: Part Five - January

By January of 2007 Brandon and I had known each other for 4 months.  We'd quickly progressed from our first date in September to becoming a couple in November.  At the end of December we had started talking about marriage.  

We began having conversations that went like this, "Well if we get married we should do _____."  Or, "If we get married we should ______." or,  "We need to remember _____ IF we get married."  The more sure we were about our eventual marriage the more we exaggerated the way we would say "if."  It got the the point where we would say it, "iiiiiiiifffffffff."

We were pretty certain we were going to get married, but we discovered that we had different opinions of how long we should be engaged.  My parents had always told me that shorter engagements are better.  They had been engaged for three months and my mom told me that was too long.  My dad even did role plays with me and my sisters when we were young where he practiced with how to tell our future husbands (and mother in laws) that we wanted short engagements.  

Brandon on the other hand was expecting to have about a six month engagement.  That's how long both of his sisters' engagements had lasted and so it seemed the right length of time to him.  

I wasn't so thrilled about that. Back when I had first fallen for Brandon in September I'd imagined that we would get married after the spring school semester ended.  I figured that was still a pretty good plan.  I didn't see any reason we had to wait until August or September to get married.  

One of Brandon's main concerns was money.  He didn't think we could afford to get married any time soon.  I countered that by telling him that I was paying $245 a month for my apartment and he was paying $350.  If we got married we could save on the cost of my apartment.  

He didn't have a good response to that because it was obvious that we didn't need my apartment.  The only things I did there were sleep, shower, and get ready for the day.  I ate all my meals over at Brandon's house.  I did that because we'd started grocery shopping together.  I had a steadier income than he did and so I started buying food to keep at his house so I wouldn't feel bad when he cooked for me. 

Every morning I'd get up and get ready.  Then I'd walk over to his house and let myself in with the key he'd given me.  Brandon had class at 7:30 so he was already gone.  I'd eat cheerios for breakfast and then walk up to campus for my classes and work.  After school or work I'd come back to his house.  Some days he was home already, but other's he would still be at school.  If he wasn't home yet I'd start making dinner.  We'd eat together and then do homework.  If we had time we'd watch a movie or TV show together, and then he'd walk me home.  I made sure I was home around 11:00.  I also made sure that my roommates at least saw me so they wouldn't think I was sleeping over at Brandon's place.  

Of course we didn't just hang out at his house.  We'd go to church on Sundays and Family Home Evening activities on Mondays.  Brandon was what we referred to as a "ward celebrity," meaning, everyone knew and loved him.  He was the co-chair of the activities committee.  He loved his calling and loved planning the monthly linger longer dinner.  

Our bishop was a skiing enthusiast and he decided to plan a skiing activity at the Beaver Mountain Ski Resort up Logan Canyon.  He put Brandon in charge of a lot of the details.  Brandon had lots of fun designing the flyer for the activity.  One Saturday Brandon and I went on a drive to scout out the location of the lodge.  We had a great time on that drive.  

After we checked out the ski resort we drove to Bear Lake and looked at how pretty it looked in the winter.  

On our way down the canyon we stopped to cut some red willows that were growing on the side of the road.  The bishops wife had some displayed in two big urns in her home and I wanted to do something similar on a smaller scale.  We cut a whole bunch of branches and then piled them into the back of Brandon's Pontiac.

A few miles later we passed a man and a women walking on the side of the road.  Brandon pulled over and offered them a ride.  They said yes and so he hurried to move the branches to the trunk.  The people got in and explained that they were with the national forest and were out putting up signs directing snow-mobilers to stay off certain areas.  They'd placed all their signs and were just walking back to their truck.

Brandon and I were pretty worried that the rangers would bring up something about our sticks.  We had no idea whether or not it was legal to cut them.  The rangers didn't say anything though.  We were relived when they got out of the car.

The day of the ski activity was really fun.  Lots of people came to the activity.  My friend Amy was in another stake, but she came with us.  I think we even set her up on a date with someone.  None of us were interested in skiing so we stayed inside and ate soup, played games, and watched the movie Cars.

Brandon had gone to a lot of trouble to play that movie.  In order to comply with copyright laws, the activity had to be considered an institute activity.  (Somehow the Logan LDS Institute had permission to legally show certain movies to large groups of people.)  So Brandon,who was kind of proud of the fact that he'd never taken an institute class, had to hand out bookmarks and ask people to register for institute classes.

It was a great activity and I was immensely proud of how hard Brandon had worked to plan it.

I had my own plans going on too.  I went to the Bridal Fair at the USU Campus.  I'd attended the one in the fall as just something fun to do. This time I went to get ideas for my real wedding.  The one I would have IF Brandon and I decided to get married.

The whole IF thing was getting more and more laughable every day.  We both knew that we were going to get married.  In fact, one night we sat down together in my room at my apartment (we did hang out there once and a while) and made a count down chain to our wedding.

We didn't have an exact date in mind yet.  But I'd got Brandon to at least consider a June wedding.  So the chain had enough links on it to count down to sometime in June.

I was pretty excited by the level of commitment the chair represented.

But I was still worried by how long Brandon wanted our engagement to be.  One day I came home from work and told Brandon, "look, I need to know when you plan on getting married.  I need to know what to do about my housing contract. Should I renew it for the summer, or can I tell them I won't need it?

"Well let's see,"  Brandon said.  He took me over to the calender and flipped to a page.  I thought it would be for June so I was surprised when I saw it was for May.  "Pick a day."  Brandon said with a smile.  I was incredibly happy.

Earlier we'd talked about how we wanted to get married on a Thursday and have our reception the next day on a Friday.  I wanted to have at least a two week break between finals week and our wedding.  We decided that we would either get married on the 17th or the 24th of May.

Now all that was left to do was to actually get engaged.

Click here for what happened next.