My Life behind the Lens

IT WAS VERY DIFFICULT TO NARROW DOWN THE FINALISTS FOR MY FREE WEDDING CONTEST. THEY ALL HAD GREAT STORIES AND I WOULD LOVE TO WORK WITH EACH AND EVERY COUPLE. A SPECIAL THANKS TO LESLIE HEDRICK, KERRY TAGUE AND TAMMY GANOTE FOR REVIEWING THE APPLICANTS AND CHOOSING THE FINALISTS.

THE FINALISTS HAVE BEEN CHOSEN FOR MY FREE WEDDING CONTEST AND THEY ARE (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER):

JENNIFER BLAUVELT AND JOSEPH CARTER

MEGAN GULLETT AND JANSEN FENNELL

WHITNEY ROSS AND BRAD COOKSEY

And here are their stories...

Joseph Carter and Jennifer Blauvelt

Our wedding date is TBA, but somewhere between May 2010 and October 2010. We are flexible people. Depending on the wedding date we have two different options for a location. As most, I would love an outdoor wedding, but weather is something that is always in the back of my head. If indoors the wedding will be at Mavity Freewill Baptist Church in Catlettsburg, KY. My parents were also married at Mavity and this is a place that I hold dear to my heart.

Joe and I have been dating for a little over a year and a half. We met at Morehead State University in 2007. He lived in Morehead on campus and I lived in Ashland and attended the campus branch. We drove back and forth every couple of days and somehow made it work. After graduating in May 2008, Joe got a job in Lexington and moved even farther. We are continuing to make the long travel and things are better than ever. I will be finished at Morehead next May and will also be moving to Lexington. Joe has taught me how to love, be loved, appreciate, and give to others. He has a heart bigger than anyone I know and is truly the love of my life. Joe and I are both Christians and I am very happy that I have found someone that I can share not only my life but also my faith with. We as a couple are family oriented, fun, outgoing, and very easy to get along with. We tend to go with the flow with just about any situation in life, and if you know me and Joe personally you know we are DIE HARD UK BASKETBALL fans.

Why do I believe we deserve a free wedding from Mrs. Julie Thacker? Personally, I don’t think we deserve anything, but I know we both work hard and this would be an awesome reward. A relationship isn’t something that comes easily and a long distance relationship is even harder. Joe and I have something special that with God on our side we always seem to get to work out. By receiving this gift from Julie Thacker I believe it would be the icing on the cake on our upcoming anticipated wedding. I have always heard that the wedding is something that last a few hours but the pictures are what you have to last your lifetime. These pictures are ones that Joseph and I would cherish for our lifetime together.

Do I believe in fate or destiny? I don’t know. One thing, however, that I do believe in without a shadow of doubt is Jansen and I. I guess you can say that I have from the very beginning. Jansen and I have both attended the same schools since kindergarten but never officially met until my junior and his sophomore year of high school when I let him take me to prom. It took some convincing from friends for me to go with this cute boy, that I hardly knew, that was younger than me but I am so glad that I did. The night was right out of a movie and could not have been any more perfect. So much so that the next morning when sitting at breakfast with family I would disclose over biscuits and eggs smiling ear from ear that “I could marry him”.

This is where you would think we started dating but I am sad to say we did not. Little did this cute boy know that I was protected by sky-high walls that no one, not even those I loved the most, could surmount. They were the result of a broken heart, ripped apart not by some high school love gone wrong but by the loss of my mother some seven years earlier. So when he put a romantic CD on my car, I loved it, but never let it show. When he asked me to the movies I said yes, but then took two friends with me so they could sit in between us. I gave him every excuse in the book as to why I could not date him, but he did not give up.

Even though we talked on the Internet sporadically for the next couple of years it was not until my sophomore year of college that we would see each other. Jansen had too started at UK allowing us to meet up for lunch a couple of times and even go bowling together with some friends. Finally, he will tell you, that he got enough nerve to ask me to a movie. After some deliberation I would say yes, leading us to watch Cinderella Man and then spend the whole night talking. Again I was falling for him but when he asked me out I would say no, stating that since it was the end of the school year we should wait through the summer. He waited, however, and actually spent the whole summer by my side. Eventually my walls would fall just enough to admit to both him and myself that I did indeed want to be his girlfriend.

I wish I could say things were easy from here on out but unfortunately once you have built walls and had practice on keeping them up they are somewhat reluctant to come down. I didn’t make things easy, the more I fell in love with him the more I pushed him away. I did everything in my power to deny that I wanted him, let alone needed him. I couldn’t open up, leaving both of us questioning and frustrated more times than I can remember. But he did not give up. He waited, never rushing, never pushing, but always understanding and loving me. He loved right through my walls to where they are no longer existent and I have no desire for them to be.

Jansen proposed to me this past August after a secret dinner reservation he had made while on vacation in Savannah, Georgia. After dinner he had a carriage ride waiting on us that escorted us throughout the city with one stop being a gazebo. This gazebo was a gift from a groom to his bride to be on their wedding day and was considered to bring those who kissed underneath it good luck due to the couples love for one another lasting over 65 years. Under this gazebo is where he would get on one knee and propose and where we would have our kiss of good luck. However, trying to have a wedding at this point in our lives is not very lucky.

Jansen and I are both in graduate school and in the process of working on our master’s, his in accounting and mine in clinical psychology. Currently we are at different schools causing us to be apart for the first time in our 3 ½ year relationship. He will be finishing next August, however, I am hoping to continue my education further by pursuing my PhD starting next August after obtaining my master’s in May. Our current situation is going to continue to make it difficult to plan a wedding let alone pay for it, therefore we could use all of the help we can get. Also depending on the PhD program I attend we may be forced to relocate adding to our expenses. Jansen will tell you that I deserve to have the wedding of my dreams and for it to be absolutely perfect. I on the other hand will tell you that he deserves not only the perfect wedding, but the world. This man that I have chosen to marry waited on me and fought for me when I thought no one could. He is the most understanding, compassionate, and loving guy I know. He has made me the person that I have always longed to be, freeing me from myself, and for that I love him and am eternally thankful.

WHITNEY ROSS AND BRAD COOKSEY

Even though Brad and I have always had mutual friends throughout high school and college, we never crossed each others paths until I was home from college on my winter break in 2005. It was just by chance that a friend of ours invited my friends and me to Brad’s house. We never really spoke to each other after that until the next couple of months. We randomly started running into each other through our friends. After we went on our first date in March 2006, we have been inseparable ever since. Even though I was still away at school, we were always on the phone late hours in the nighttime, talking about everything. He made me laugh more and more each time we talked. I really wasn’t happy at Northern and I moved back home. Brad & I started hanging out more and more and I realized that he was someone very special to me.

We really began dating when I moved back home to Ashland and continued on at Morehead. Brad was enrolled in a very strenuous program at school. We studied together, watched movies together, travelled, and had fun. I knew that he was the one. We both had grown to understand and love each other and started talking about starting a life together.

When Brad and I went to the beach together this summer, he kept checking and re-checking his carry-on. I didn’t think anything of it because he has always been sort-of obsessive about knowing where all his belongings are (especially going out of the country.) When we finally got to our room, after hiking all around the hotel and trying to find our building, we were tired, hot and sweaty. And of course, our luggage hadn’t made it to our room yet. Just moments later, he popped the big question. I really couldn’t believe I was going to marry my best friend.

Since we are both just getting out of college and starting with our new jobs, we hope to help our parents with the wedding process since we also have younger siblings still in college. We are so appreciative of our families and what they have done for us. Having our wedding photos taken by Julie is such a thrill!! She is very talented and takes such pride in her work. We would not consider anyone else to capture our special moments on our planned wedding date on October 2, 2010.

November 04, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)