This one is a doozy for sure. I'm still shocked that it happened. Not that I got married, but the fact that I DIDN'T get married on my actual wedding day. Yep, you heard that right. Shall I continue?....

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Rewind to a few months before our scheduled wedding day. Just a cute engaged couple going to get a marriage license. We went to the courthouse, get the license, and went home. Everything was going according to plan! We dared not open the envelope or leave it lying around because we didn't want to lose it. BIG MISTAKE.

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Fast forward to about a week before the wedding date. My mom and my little sister are in my room helping me try on my wedding dress to see if it still fits (All you brides know the struggle...). When we were finished, my mom asked me where my marriage license was. Proudly I told her that I had it safely on the book shelf in my room and that it wasn't to be touched or opened, fearing that something would happen to it. I was treating that think like the Holy Grail! Another BIG MISTAKE.

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So, the wedding day finally comes and the day is bliss! Everything is going according to plan, everyone is happy and getting along, it's looking like it's going to be a great day. Sterling and I were scheduled to be married in the San Diego Temple in California. So, we arrived early for our appointment and waited eagerly to get our papers checked out by the Sealer (Now, for those of you who are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a Sealer is someone that is called to work in the temple and specifically "seal" couples for time AND all eternity). While we waited outside the Sealer's office, we saw our friends and family start to arrive for the ceremony. We were feeling all the feelings at that point. Excitement, joy, a little nervous, but all in all totally in love! 

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When he finally called us in, he spoke to us a little bit about how the ceremony would go and a few housekeeping things. One of them being reviewing the marriage license since he was the one that was going to sign it after the ceremony was over. I proudly brought out the envelope from my bag and gave it to the Sealed. I remember him taking out all the contents of the envelope, reviewing each paper, and then looking back up at us saying, "Its not here." My heart sunk. "What do you mean, it's right there." I pointed to what looked like the marriage license. "Unfortunately, this is just a copy of the original license. It is not the official one that you need. Is there anywhere else that it might be?"

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I was panicking at this point. I know we had never opened that envelope. The courthouse clerk gave it to us, said everything was in there and to keep it somewhere safe, and I did just that! How could it not be in there?? We sat in the hallway again and my mom came over and realized immediately something was wrong. "Our marriage license isn't in the envelope..." So, as al mothers do, she tried to think of every possible solution, and we tried. Every. Possible. Solution. We had people drive back to Sterling's house which was 40 minutes away and rummage through everything to find it. Nothing. We looked through all my bags with me, and at the hotel. Nothing again. We called the courthouse to see if we could get a new license, but since it was a Saturday they were closed. We finally called church headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah and explained the situation. "Without a license, they can't get married today."

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I sat in the hallway and cried. No, I sobbed. Sterling held me in his arms and I grieved the loss of my "perfect" wedding day. I couldn't believe that this of all things was what we missed. After sobbing for what seemed hours, we had to say something to our friends and family who had been patiently waiting for us for about 2 hours. They knew something was wrong. They were taken and seated in a large meeting room to wait for us.

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We held each other tight and walked into the room. All eyes on us. Mostly faces of concern. No one had been told what was happening. We made our way in front of them and I began to speak, but started to choke on my words as tears welled up in my eyes. I honestly didn't know what to say. I started sobbing again. Sterling Held me tight and addresses everyone. "It looks like there has been a mistake and we misplaced our marriage license. We will not be getting married today."

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There was a long pause as he started to softly cry as well. Silence fell on the room and not a word was spoken for several minutes. When we finally gained composure again, Sterling pulled me close and looked at everyone and smiled softly. "There may not be a wedding today, but we we still in love and we still want to celebrate with all of you. We will still have a party later and we hope that all of you can be there. We love you all!" Everyone got up and hugged us. There was so much love in that room. No one could have predicted that out of all the things that would "go wrong" on our wedding day, that we would lose the one thing that would actually allow us to get married.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After we were done, My mom and one of my sister's took me back in to the brides getting ready room. There were two other brides in there getting ready and they looked so happy. I started crying again. I was so sad that I did not feel that way. My mom and sister quickly grabbed all my things and ran over to one of the temple workers that was in the room. "We need to get her out of here. Is there a more private room that we can go to?"

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"Of course!" She took us down the hall to the locker rooms. A bit less glamorous than the beautiful brides getting ready room, but it was quiet and we were alone. We had a moment where we all hugged and cried. I needed a good last cry for the day to get it all out of me before I had to face the rest of the day. Once we were done, we quickly cleaned up as best we could, re applied my make up, took a deep breath and went to find Sterling so we could do the "grand exit" where all of our friends and family would be waiting outside. 

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We arrived at the door. "good luck. We're still going to have a great day." My mom left us with those words and went out side to join the rest of our wedding party. I wanted to cry again because i didn't know if I could face them all. How could it be a "grand exit" if we weren't even married. But I help back my tears, looked at Sterling and he looked at me. We both smiled and we walked out that door. The moment I saw everyone cheering for us, all the sadness left me. We threw up our arms and cheered with them. I'm still tearing up now while I write this, even though its been 3 years since that day. We received so much love, grace, and support that day from our friends and family. And we still had a great day! Read more about it here: 

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Even though we had everything else. We had our family, friends, beautiful weather, everyone healthy, a beautiful venue, beautiful flowers, delicious food, the list goes on! But I would have given all of that up just to have gotten married to the man I love and have all our family and friends with us. If I could give one piece of advice to you new brides.... If you don't have the marriage license, nothing else matters. You'd also be amazed at how many people we've helped by telling our crazy story. So many people have either told us our our parents that they are so grateful that we told our story, becuase they made sure to double check EVERYTHING for their child's wedding. 

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