If you were unable to attend our 2020 wedding ceremony, you can watch the recording here! Thank you to everyone who has supported us in our journey so far - we cannot thank you enough! https://vimeo.com/435126415/8bc6008006

The big yellow school bus began to pull out of the gravel path and onto the paved road as we left Camp Michindoh. After an exhausting weekend, I was ironically thankful to finally be on the crowded bus filled with other smelly high school students after a weekend filled with screaming, games, and team activities. I was ready to fall fast asleep like everyone else for the 6-hour bus ride that awaited me. But that didn’t happen. Twenty minutes into the bus ride, I found myself having a difficult time falling asleep. So, I struck up a conversation with the girl sitting across the aisle from me. I met her in 5th grade and had known her for a while. At least, I thought I knew her. I had grown up going to a very small church youth group with her. I knew she was one year younger than myself. I knew her parents. I knew she went to Wheaton Academy and that she sang. But after a few minutes into our conversation, I realized I didn’t know her at all . What I really didn’t know was that this 16-year-old girl would one day be my wife. The 6-hour bus ride felt like a 5-minute conversation with Alayna We talked about our lives, our families, and what we did for fun. As the bus pulled into the church parking lot, I couldn’t believe that we had talked the entire time. I remember driving home and thinking to myself, “I think I like her.”

One year later, I knew that I wanted to ask her to prom. But as a typical teenage guy, I was dragging my feet. “What if she doesn’t like me? What if she says no?” These questions roamed the back of my mind. After being encouraged both by my parents and by my youth pastor, I decided to ask her. But I wanted to ask her dad first.. During my short, 15 minute break at Subway one night, I nervously hung up my sandwich artist apron and headed straight for the restroom where no one would be able to hear me. After a very brief conversation, I was given the green light. I was going to ask Alayna to prom. But there was one problem. She said “no.” Well, not actually. She had an important concert that same night and wasn’t able to get out of it for good reasons. But, regardless, I was devastated. I decided that I needed to make it up to her. So later that summer, I took her to dinner with some friends and to a local musical. We had an incredible time. But again, there was one problem. I was going into college and entering into a residential leadership program that asked me to refrain from dating. So, I did. After 9 months of hardly talking, I finished my freshman year and still realized that I wanted nothing more than to ask Alayna on a date. In the early summer of 2016, I asked her if she would go see fireworks with me. This time, she said “yes.” Soon after that, we started dating. That summer, we became best friends. We went on long walks and held hands. We played chess in a park and rode our bikes to eat ice cream. Three years later, I asked Alayna if she would spend the rest of her life with me. You probably know what she said.

How’d we meet? Way back in the day when I was a mere 4th grader, I met Daniel Robert Small at church. He played the trumpet and greeted everyone with a friendly Sunday good morning. Since I was a kid, my mom would joke around that I was gonna marry Daniel Small. Of course, I denied it and said that boys were icky and weird. Daniel and I were friends but never hung out outside of church. Then my Sophomore year at church retreat, things took a turn. The bus ride home took 6 hours because we were driving through a blizzard. Somehow we and I ended up sitting across from each other on the bus and talked the entire time. Prom? Funny thing, Daniel and I never actually talked about dating or even that we liked each other. A year after Breakaway, he asked me to his Senior prom! I was beyond excited until I found out it was the same night as my choir concert. To this day, Daniel will probably still say that I rejected him for prom. But by asking, he put it out there that he was interested. Just when I thought maybe dating would work out, I heard he was joining the Eikon program during his first year of college, where they were asked to refrain from dating. So dating was put on hold for at least another year. Will you be my girlfriend? Pick up the summer after I graduated highschool. He reached out after a year of pretty much no communication and asked me to be his girlfriend after just a few dates. A month later, I started school at ISU. That marked the start of our 4 year long distance journey. We filled in the distance with visits and countless phone and FaceTime calls. Woah, love? One weekend at ISU, Daniel surprised me with a visit. As we were taking a walk and talking about something I don’t really remember anymore, he said something along the lines of “well that’s just because we love each other”. I had never heard him say those words to me. I responded with “wait, what was that?”. He looked me in the eyes and told me he loved me. Couldn’t be any clearer.

Can we fast forward to the ring? The proposal was about as perfect as can be. Every summer since we started dating, we would take a weekend to visit his grandma at her lake house in Lake Carroll. We went out there the first weekend in August this year and it was our last weekend together before I moved back to school. We had talked about marriage for a couple years and lots of hints had been dropped that engagement was coming soon. Daniel had faked me out a few times that summer, so I was already on alert. Anyway, he had been talking about how he wanted to spend a day in Galena and eat at some super cool restaurant where he made reservations. So naturally I thought, ok, obviously it’s gonna happen at dinner. But dinner came and went with no special questions asked. I left feeling confused and honestly annoyed that I had been fooled again. The car ride home was pretty quiet. When we got back to Lake Carroll, Daniel took a turn in a different direction than the house and we ended up at the fishing docks. I didn’t really want to take a walk in my cocktail dress near all the fish guts and swimming kids. After I questioned him some more, Daniel’s uncle rolled up in their boat. Romantic music was playing and the chairs had been wrapped in fabric and flowers. I instantly felt bad for being grouchy for the past couple hours because I realized that the moment I had waited for was actually here. As we pulled up to the house, the stairs up the hill were lined with a photo timeline of our life together so far. Flower petals lined the path and my favorite movie soundtrack played in the background. We walked me through the pictures and letters that we had sent back and forth, all lined up, until we reached the top where he popped the question!! After he found the ring behind the right pillar, because every good proposal story has it’s funny hitches, I said yes (obviously). Our friends and family poured out of the house to celebrate with us, marking a proposal to remember forever.