Winners of the Wedding Story Contest!!

Congratulations to the winners of our Wedding Story Contest!!  Brittany Asay & Stephen Stoker we are so happy for you guys.  Special thanks to All Points Travel for providing this couple and our second runner up with the FANTASTIC prizes.  All Points Travel is incredible, don’t forget to check them out here.

Here is Brittany & Stephen’s story and we wish you all the love & happiness in your future together.

Our Love Story

“I am not going to lie. I highly doubt that I am the most deserving bride entering this contest. However, I am a girl, who after going through her own fair share of troubles, likes to be cut a break every once in a while. I would really like to share a break with my very deserving fiancé, who is indubitably the most deserving groom.

I once had a beautiful wedding. The wedding was perfect. The marriage was not. In August of 2008, on my fifth anniversary, my husband walked through the front door, blew out the candles of the anniversary dinner I had made, and told me about his years of infidelity. Divorce is not a terminal illness. As far as I know, no one has died as a direct result of divorce (“direct” being the operative word here). However, the pain and the grief was very real, and even now, every so often, I feel the piercing sting of betrayal all over again.

After all of the paperwork was signed, after months of therapy, I was ready to be out on my own, nothing but a decade of wasted years under my belt and fists clenched in determination to never let anyone in again. I hardly felt empty. I felt empowered. During the daytime. Nights were a different story. As I laid in bed, I wondered if this was really what my life was supposed to be. I love who I am and still feel very independent. I live on my own and have my own ideas. For about a year, I did as I pleased during the daytime and prayed over my emptiness at night.

When Stephen was three weeks old, his dad walked out on his family, leaving Stephen’s mom with three young kids, Stephen obviously being a newborn. For 26 years, Stephen has been there for his dad who was never there for him. That’s the kind of guy Stephen is. He will do anything for anyone. He has the biggest, kindest heart of anyone I know. He pours his whole heart into every one of his relationships and expects nothing in return. For all those years, even after his two older sisters gave up on their father, Stephen was helping his dad with his car repairs, going over for visits, having dinner with him, all the while his father complained about how his kids never cared about him, Stephen included.

Stephen’s dad passed away four days after Stephen and I got engaged. Stephen sang at the funeral and I sat next to his step-mom. He was there to give his stepmother hugs as needed and stayed the entire day, honoring the life of the father who could never be bothered to show love for his son.

Stephen and I met on August 24, 2009. We were at an activity for our singles ward and sat across the table. Stephen had just lost about fifty pounds and was feeling more confident than usual. He looked down at his recently downsized waistline, gave himself a mental pep talk (he told me later he was saying, “Hey, you’re attractive now! She can talk to you!”) and said hi to me. That night we drove around Ogden. I’m not going to say it was love at first sight. First, I don’t believe in that and neither does Stephen. Second, I was determined that my life was going to be just mine and I was not looking for anything like that. Since the day we met, every word out of Stephen’s mouth has echoed mine. We will randomly burst into song, in the middle of a song, at the exact same time, in harmony. I sent him a picture message of me making a goofy face we make to say, “I love you!” and was surprised as I pressed the “Send” button to get one from him of him making the goofy “I love you!” face. I could go on and on but the moral of the story is that we are two peas in a pod. We are quite literally exactly alike, and I often doubt if there is anybody else in the world who gets along quite as perfectly as we do, or cares about each other nearly as much. Everywhere we go, random strangers approach us to remark that they love the way that Stephen looks at me, that they noticed him wink at me across the room, that they have never seen two people so in love with each other than we are. We had been dating only a week when people started asking us when we were going to get married. Nobody could believe that we hadn’t been together for much longer than that. On our second date, a man asked us how many kids we had and how old they were! We told him we didn’t have kids (and were pretty offended that he would think we were old enough to have any—we both look like we could be in our teens still!) and he apologized, saying, “You guys just have that look of having been together for years!” That has been our relationship and we love it! In our spare time, we like to remodel the house I bought that we are going to be living in. We love to cook together, and we have a movie review blog that we like to contribute to (shamelessplug:http://themoviecollectioncollision.wordpress.com).

Why We Deserve a Disneyland Extravaganza
I think that Stephen and I deserve a Disneyland vacation because I think it’s time that both of us just got a break. Growing up, his dad broke his heart repeatedly. Mine was just shattered badly the once, but I have been dealing with it almost every day since. Almost every day either he or I will comment that we have been looking for this our whole life, and we have. The moment we met we both had kind of an epiphany. It was like a voice in my head telling me: “This is the person you’ve been searching for.” Other than all of that, my parents are on a mission for the LDS Church and won’t be able to help pay for the wedding. Stephen grew up with a single mom and money is and has always been hard to come by. I have been in the hospital a few times in the past few months and have no health insurance. And we are paying for our beautiful wedding ourselves. Being able to take off to Disneyland for a couple days and having one less thing to worry about paying for would literally be an answer to prayers. Stephen is there every night to tuck me in before he goes home. Stephen rescued me from the life I had resigned myself to live. Actually, we both feel like we were rescued from our lives before. Not that they were bad, but we didn’t realize how great life could be until the day we met. Don’t feel bad if we don’t win this contest. We’ll have fun wherever we go, but I feel like the happiest couple on earth really deserves to share the happiest place on earth together. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Thanks for reading!”

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