We want to celebrate with you!

This website was designed specifically for our smaller group of guests attending the wedding day dinner and program. We hope this will be a useful tool to help you navigate all the wedding festivities and if you're traveling, to make the most of your weekend in Salt Lake City! If you're here you must be extra special to us- thank you thank you thank you for being a part of our lives!!

Hi this is James - Here's my side of the story! In December 2022, I had been invited to go to this group date to the amazing Christmas lights at Thanksgiving Point. I thought, "Easy! One of the (numerous) girls I've been talking to will definitely be down." Long story short, they weren't (divine providence??). So there I was, morning of the date, without anyone I knew that was available and interesting to me. Where would you go in that situation? I went to my sister Mari, who had just moved there - and she had just the girl in mind! Sara had taken one of her very first law school finals that day, but she was so gracious to say yes. We had a good time! No problems! We didn't talk much at all after that first date, but I would see her in the law school when I studied there sometimes. I was always ready to say hi, wave, or acknowledge her existence at all, but she never did... Fast forward 2 months later and it turned out she just hadn't been seeing me! So starting that February we started talking more, hanging out, and going on fun trips! What a great ride it's been! Sara's P.O.V.— It was (FINALLY) the end of my first semester of law school, and I just had finished a grueling property law final. Just as I was cooking dinner and really looking forward to a blissful night of ~doing nothing~, I got a call from Mari Anderson. I had met Mari a little over a year ago while getting my bachelor's in Austin, Texas. She was a missionary assigned to serve in the church congregation associated with the University of Texas (hook 'em). My church responsibilities included working with the missionaries, so we become fast friends and stayed in touch since. Mari explained over the phone that her brother was in desperate need of a girl for a date happening in about two hours. After my feeble attempts to explain that my lack of plans was in fact THE plan, I agreed to go. We had a lovely time walking around an impressive Christmas Lights display and drinking hot chocolate. First impression: super inoffensive nice guy from Idaho who carries a knife! We had a great time! The timing just wasn’t quite right, and we went our separate ways winter break, till I FINALLY saw him at the law school in February:)

Hi it's James again. So Sara went to Philadelphia last summer for a super dope internship. We hung out the night before she flew out, so I knew I must mean something to her, and all my friends and family were always asking me about her because she was starting to mean plenty to me, too. They all wanted to know if I was going to go see her in Philly! (I mean, she HAD come to Idaho already!) I was intrigued by the idea, but wasn't sure... until she brought it up! The people she was staying with had suggested it to her! So I went out East for three days and we got to see New York, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia. She planned the most amazing things, we had so much fun! And on the long drive back to Philly from D.C., she started to beat the bush around the dating topic. I answered her questions, and was very excited she was thinking that way, but knew that if I pushed the issue I might scare her away, so I was verrrrrrry careful. We flew back to Utah together, and spent another week hanging out before we became bf/gf officially on July 16, one week after getting back from the East coast! Sara’s P.O.V.- So I was totally smitten. Like, after our second date. But there was a long road ahead, and James didn’t always make it easy. Knowing I was leaving for the summer, I had to make some big moves. After my hail-mary invitation to law school prom (which he accepted), I invited myself to his family’s place in Ashton, Idaho to see his brother’s play. That was the first time I got to meet the rest of his wonderful family. Just few weeks, l was off to Philly. We texted, called, and even started to FaceTime in the coming weeks. The AMAZING couple I was staying with, after a few weeks of me talking about James, told me to invite me out and make an East Coast roadtrip out of it, via their car. I almost peed my pants. James was like “wait, so just the two of us?” And I said “yeah.” And then shockingly, he agreed! Once my internship ended 10 weeks later, we had the time of our lives driving the East Coast (pictures below). I thought SURELY he would make it official on the top of the skyscrapers in New York, ore perhaps on the Rocky Steps in Philly, or maybe at the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. But alas, it did not come to be until a week later back in Provo, UT.

James again - I had brought up marriage a few times, but only briefly - we were both soooo careful to not make marriage the main topic of our courtship, you know? But we were also definitely falling pretty hard, you know? And Sara didn't want to bring it up because she brought up dating, so she waited for me:) Basically, we talked about it more and more, and eventually decided to go ring shopping! Once the rings were on the way, I knew I had to act quick, since Sara was moving to D.C. for another internship. So I worked it all out with my buddy Evan, who was also getting engaged - we were gonna use each other's proposals as covers for our own! He was going to propose on a Friday, but tell his girlfriend that I was proposing on that date, not him. And Sara was in on that plan, so she had no idea it was coming on Thursday, the day before! What really made it crazy was that she got up that morning at 3 AM to go help her sister Emily have a baby!! So she was WIPED all day, while I had all this nervous/romantic energy and could barely get anything done at work. When we finished our workday, I let her lie down while I cooked dinner (needed her energy up!!) and only rushed us through dinner a little. We took my landlady's brand new Ford Bronco to Trolley Square, and I proposed on top of the beautiful, lit-up water tower, where we could see the whole skyline, mountains, and gorgeous sunset. It was so quiet and peaceful, and I'll never forget pulling the ring out of my pocket, where it had been sitting ALL DAY! I can't believe she said yes. I really am just the luckiest guy ever!! Sara's P.O.V.- This really was the most wild day. At 3am, I’m booking it down from SLC to Provo in order to make it to the birth of my nephew. After Emily’s AMAZING performance, I headed back up to SLC for an afternoon of appointments, finally meeting James to finish up the workday. My plans for the evening were to meet up with bestie McKenna and her husband Caleb for a double-date, then head back down to Provo to stay with Emily + newborn for the weekend. Unfortunately, as I pulled up to meet James, I got a text from Mckenna canceling the date, and a text from Emily saying a ton of family was over and she’d be fine! When I let James know, he was all “aw shucks!” and proposed we still do something fun that night. I, primarily, needed a nap. After waking up to a delicious Alfredo dinner, he suggested a car ride to the water tower. Him wanting to get there in time for sunset raised a small level of suspicion, but it really wasn’t until I tried to engage with him in a conversation about TORQUE and STICK SHIFT (some favorite topics of his) on the car ride and he absolutely couldn’t focus for a second on the conversation did I get actually suspicious. We really did have the most phenomenal view from the top of the tower, and it was a beautiful proposal. WELL DONE JAMES!!!