We got Married!

 Finally Married! A long a-waited 6 years.

     We sure talked about getting married for many many years. As young teens we were so in love. Truly in love! Although our love totally frightened our parents at our young age, we couldn't deny it. We felt so blessed and lucky to have met.
    James and I always had a strong desire to live good, righteous lives. As we tried to align our lives with the  principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and follow the standards that the the Lord gave us; we truly found happiness. We believe in the Lord's Plan of Happiness, and we truly believe it is a plan for us to be happy.
    We knew there were some specific steps that needed to be taken, before we could jump into our married dream together. We felt it was most important for James to serve the Lord and go on a LDS (Latter Day Saints) mission. This video link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aKU2rkvFQU#t=297
explains very well, why we value the decision to go on a mission. It also explains why serving a full time mission is placed so high on our priority list. We dream of, and truly plan on returning to the mission field together one day.

     After James got home from his mission we continued taking large steps toward our marriage dream. We carefully considered the things we wanted and we brought them before the Lord. After a lot of discussion, many prayers, and careful listening; We made the decision to get married.
     Once this was decided, we realized that we needed to plan our wedding in the next month during Christmas Break; Or wait another 6 months until after the winter semester was completed. We didn't want to wait another 6 months, so my mom (Carolyn) helped us plan a wedding in one month. Whoa!
The most important aspect of our wedding plan was our temple marriage ceremony. We booked whatever date was still available over Christmas Break. Then we let all the other pieces fall into place.

   

     Our wedding reception was at The Old Meeting House, on Highland Drive, in Salk Lake City.  The reception was held the night before the wedding on December 29, 2003 – I would not suggest this order of events to anyone. But having planned our wedding in a month, we didn't have much of a choice about dates.

    Our Wedding Day was very cold, very snowy, and very beautiful! The power had been out in Salt Lake City for 3 days straight due to heavy snow storms. The Mike Munnerlyn family truly learned something about the value of a wood burning stove; and a stock pile of black coal, during this 3 day power outage. We prepared ourselves to continue on with the wedding reception by candle light. Luckily the power was fixed and the lights in The Old Meeting House turned on 1 hour before go time.
     The colors that I picked for my wedding were rose red, silver, black, and white. These colors lend themselves to a very elegant and formal evening. It was so beautiful! There were red roses everywhere you turn. The 3-tower tall, square, chocolate with raspberry filling wedding cake was decorated with lovely red roses too.
     The tables were decorated with red roses and silver picture frames filled with cute little pictures of James and me. Also, I had put together a scrap book that our guests could look through. It was a book with pictures of us together before James' mission, pictures of each of us during our 2 year mission separation, and a few pictures of our re-uniting.
     Let me say once again,  our wedding reception was very formal and very elegant right up until the dancing began. Honestly the dancing was the best part. We were able to break away from the greeting line, and form a dancing snake line with all that would join in. We hired a wedding band that had a nice swing style to their music. I had heard this band once before at Brooke Cowley's wedding, and remembered how I liked their style. So we hired them for our wedding. Throughout all the dancing our family and friends were really putting the pressure on James. They kept urging him to stand at the mic and sing a love song to me. He decided to play the guitar and sing the very first song that he wrote for me. He must have been pretty nervous, because he totally forgot the words to the song. I loved it, it was super cute! James and I danced the waltz to, "Feels Like Home"  by Chantal Kreviazuk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZZ1uDFKp20
The waltz was something that we had learned and practiced with our social dance teacher at Dixie State College. She was so kind to take some extra time with us to practice our wedding dance.

Tuesday December 30th, 2003     

     We had our wedding ceremony in the Salt Lake City Temple. It was a beautiful ceremony. What a wonderful blessing from our Lord! I am sealed to the most wonderful man. James and I are sealed for time here on earth and for all eternity. And our future family will be sealed to us forever. Families can be Together Forever, what a wonderful plan.
   I chose to go through the temple for the first time just hours before my temple marriage. I wish I knew better. There is a lot to learn in the temple, and each ceremony is so important. I think that it is important to separate the two different temple ceremonies. I also think that a temple prep class is very important and very helpful. With that said, I truly believe that going back to the temple time and time again is wonderful, very important, and very helpful.

     We are living in St. George right now, and we are going to Dixie State College. We love it here! Rent costs $425/month, not bad. Our carpet is green. "Scratch"our bearded dragon is our only animal. And we live on the 2nd floor. It sure is fun to have our own place together, it's like playing house, but FOR REAL!
We like living out on our own. It's been nice to live in St.George; and to have a little distance from our family, while we are newly weds. It's even better that we don't live too far from our family, because we love visitors.

Visiting the Grand Canyon with Ryan and Jessica