We love sharing new experiences together and find these opportunities for growth in a mutual appreciation for travel, theatre, and fitness. We consider the Disney Theme Parks a second home and travel there frequently. Also enjoying petting dogs, mixology, Indian food, and analyzing the shit out of any topic.
All aspects of our relationship, including the proposal, have not been “normal” by most standards. We were together for eight years before we started the process of coming out to family and friends.
For a long time, we had known that we wanted to get married, and six months before our tenth anniversary. While sitting together on the couch in our living room, we mutually discussed the idea of putting those thoughts into action. There were no secrets or surprises. Our engagement was handled by how we have made all our decisions since our relationship began together.
There was some stress surrounding the engagement since there has been an unsupportive family member. It made it difficult to celebrate our engagement. With the constant worry in the back of our minds of how to handle this situation. About one month after the engagement, Marnie began having numbness and loss of muscle function on her body’s right side.
She has recently received the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.
All the stress overshadowed the engagement and made us realize that we needed [and deserved] the opportunity to have our relationship and proposal celebrated.
We decided not to purchase engagement rings. Trying to live a somewhat minimalist lifestyle. We valued spending our money documenting our love in our second home, Walt Disney World. The idea of engagement rings never held much value for us, but photographs of our travels and experiences always have.
We took our first trip to Walt Disney World together before we began dating. Once we started dating, it became a frequent travel destination and a second home. We found in it a place where we could unabashedly be ourselves, as individuals and together. Not to mention, Florida has a lot more sunshine than Omaha! Since we have been together, we have been to the Walt Disney World parks thirty-three times. Disneyland four times and sailed on three Disney cruises. Traveled to Aulani, a Disney Resort in Hawaii, and will be going to Disneyland Paris in June of 2019 and Tokyo Disneyland in the Fall of 2020. After speaking with our fantastic wedding photographer about an engagement photo session, we had the idea to go to Walt Disney World to celebrate our relationship and engagement.
Emma followed us for the weekend, camera in hand, while we played in our favorite locations at the parks. With the recent distractions, it was the first time we were both able to feel genuinely excited about our upcoming wedding.
As far as wedding planning goes, things are going great! We knew we wanted something intimate, which would be a good representation of who we are as a couple. We also wanted the wedding, like our relationship, free of any societal pressures or preconceived notions of what it should be.
Due to our frequent travels, everyone in our lives expected us to have a destination wedding. But we like to keep people guessing and are having a wedding in our hometown. Many aspects of our relationship have occurred out of order compared to the norm.
We see our wedding as a time to present our relationship and its vulnerabilities to our family, friends, and the world. We wanted the wedding to be in a lounge setting as we didn’t want a dance but wanted the party to be relaxing filled with stories, laughter, and conversation.
Photography by The Bold Americana
