Pleasant View Bible Church

Wedding Day

Hamilton County Fairgrounds

Reception

Our Wedding

Colten and I have grown up in the same church. We knew about each other but never talked because of the age difference at such a young age. During my junior year of high school, his freshman, we were leaders for the Sparks group of AWANA. Slowly becoming friends, we would talk on Wednesday nights. The next year, my senior year, I decided to join the youth group. Here we slowly became closer and our friendship grew more. We spent that whole school year and summer with our mutual friends until I headed off to UNK to start college. Colten stayed in Aurora and started his junior year at AHS.

Meeting

With me in Kearney and Colten in Aurora, our friendship stayed strong. I would come home on weekends and we would get together to hang out. Over Thanksgiving break in 2019, we decided to have a Star Wars movie marathon with some friends. We still aren't sure how but after that night we just decided to change our status from "bestfriends" to "dating." From that moment on we have been each others rocks with everything that we do. The distance was a little weird at first, but we soon got into routine of FaceTiming every night to tell the other about our day. School ended in-person classes in early March due to COVID, so I came home. We continued to strengthen and grow in our relationship with each other as well as our relationship with God. Around month 3 of dating, we nonchalantly agreed that we wanted to relationship to continue and eventually lead to marriage instead of becoming a waste of time. After that conversation, we continued on as normal in our relationship until the beginning of this year. Around January, we started getting serious about the whole marriage idea. We would look at engagement rings, talk about what kind of dress I would have, what our colors would be, just all the normal wedding planning you do once you're engaged. I would jokingly pester Colten and ask when I was going to get that ring that symbolizes our forever. I'm sure he got plenty annoyed with my pestering because he was just trying to make it through the rest of senior year.

When it Began

This is my favorite date until November rolls around. March 7th was a Sunday. We had gone to church that morning and decided to go out to eat. We got our food and went to a park to eat. I was so sure this was going to be it. Be the time that I get that little ring on my finger. To no avail we finished eating and got in the car to head back to his house. I looked at him and said something along the lines of "so there's no ring..." He just laughed and told me to be patient because I wouldn't be getting it that day. After being at his house for a few hours he asked if I wanted to go on a walk. This wasn't out of the ordinary, so I didn't think anything of it. We got to the Streeter Park and walked around by the old baseball fields. At one point he told me to walk faster because I was going to slow. A few minutes after he told me to speed up I turn around to mock him and tell him to speed up because he had basically come to a complete stop. As I was turning around Colten got down on one knee and pulled out the ring box from his back pocket. In the moment I had no idea what was happening as my hands flew up to my mouth and my eyes watered a little bit. The next words Colten spoke were "have you ever thought about spending the rest of your life with me?"

Anna & Colten

Anna & Colten

Wedding Party