Mawwage

Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time ever, please welcome back to Blogspot the newly married Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah and Hannah Dwight!! That’s right, the wedding has come and gone – just as fast as everyone promised it would. But before we dive any deeper into that, I should back up a few weeks. Also, go ahead and grab your favorite snack/beverage, because it’s been an eventful month, so this is gonna be a LONG post!

Hannah last wrote just a few days before our graduation ceremonies, so that’s where I’ll pick things up! It was a fun week of celebrations. We attended Commencement on Monday evening, where the former CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, gave a great speech highlighting ASU’s mission of making higher education more accessible. He also left us with a new vocabulary word:  umbutu, which means “I am because of you” in some African language – a good mentality to keep in mind during graduation week. Then Tuesday morning was Hannah’s Barrett Honors College convocation, Wednesday afternoon was my engineering convocation, and wrapping up the week on Friday evening was Hannah’s College of Health Solutions convocation. Despite the literally thousands of names being read, the excitement of graduating made the ceremonies fun. It’s awesome to celebrate our accomplishments in the presence of some of the friends and family who played such an important role in supporting us and facilitating our success. In the words of Mr. Schultz: Umbutu! Umbutu! Umbutu!

It’s still crazy to think we’re both finished at ASU! I know I speak for both of us when I say it was an incredible experience. We made great friends, great memories, and learned a ton. But even though we’re no longer ASU students, and even though we’ll be living in a whole new state, we’ll always be Sun Devils. Yes, I know that’s cheesy… but it’s true, and saying that reminds me (1) how proud I am to call myself a Sun Devil and (2) to always cherish my college experience!

Once graduation week finished, it was time to focus more than ever on wedding prep! Thankfully we’d done a good job taking care of most things ahead of time, but that still left a surprising amount of “little things” to take care of. We had our final meeting with our coordinator, where we finalized decorations, ceremony timeline, guest count, reception layout, and much more. We also assembled guest bags for our out-of-town guests and delivered them to the hotels where they’d be staying. And we helped Hannah’s mom put together the favors, which were cute little boxes containing two of her trademark chocolate-covered Oreos with beautiful transfer designs on top. She must have put dozens of hours into making those, but I think it was worth every minute because they turned out great! (I should know, as I taste-tested plenty of them!) I’m sure there were more things I could mention, but Hannah and her parents were so on top of everything that much of it went unnoticed to me! But if you’re thinking I was a hands-off groom, you’d be wrong – I think I helped with a lot of the planning and preparation, and I really enjoyed it, too!

Amidst all this, Hannah and I had our bachelor/bachelorette parties the weekend before the wedding. Both were a ton of fun, and a much-needed break from the busyness of final wedding prep. For mine, Nathan and Brian planned a weekend up at Lake Havasu! Twelve of us drove up Saturday morning and rented a pontoon boat to spend all afternoon on the lake. We cliff-jumped, hung out on a few sand bars, gorged on burgers/snacks/beer, had way too much trouble anchoring the boat, and just enjoyed perfect boating weather. After that we grabbed pizza and went back to an Airbnb for the night, which included both standard (beer pong) and not-so-standard (Nerf war) bachelor party antics. We grabbed an awesome brunch at a local diner called Sam’s Place before heading home the next day. I couldn’t have asked for a better bachelor party!

Hannah’s bachelorette party began with volunteering at Feed Our Starving Children Saturday afternoon! Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Who starts their bachelorette party – an event meant to celebrate YOU – with service directed towards others??” My wife, that’s who! Consider this a testament to one of the many qualities I admire about her:  her thoughtfulness. Anyway, after that they hung out at their Airbnb before heading to Cibo (a delicious pizza restaurant) for dinner, followed by Bitter and Twisted for drinks and The Deuce for more drinks and dancing. Then they spent the night at the Airbnb and finished with brunch the next morning. From what I understand it was a really fun weekend!

All our wedding prep culminated with the rehearsal the day before the wedding. It went pretty smoothly, and was surprisingly quick! Afterward we drove up to Scottsdale for our rehearsal dinner at one of our favorite Italian restaurants, Maggiano’s. It was a nice, long, family-style dinner, and almost all of our out-of-town guests were able to come, so it was perfect for catching up and mingling prior to the wedding itself. The food was great, too; my favorites were fried ravioli and four cheese cannelloni! We were even treated to a few toasts from family and friends, which varied in their degrees of sentimentality and humor but were all very thoughtful and appreciated!

And then, after over 14 months of engagement and 6 years of dating, our wedding day arrived!! In short, it was amazing – as great as we could have asked for. But you’re probably looking for more details, huh? So I guess I’ll elaborate!

Hannah and her bridesmaids arrived at the venue around 11am to get their hair and makeup done, but I didn’t arrive till around 2. ‘Cause, you know, not that much to prepare when you’re a guy! My groomsmen arrived shortly after, and we just hung out in the groom’s room for a couple hours. We played fooseball, chatted, and ate some awesome Fractured Prune donuts my brother-in-law brought! Finally it was time to get ready for photos, so we suited up and went outside for some groomsmen shots as the guests began arriving and Hannah’s uncle played bagpipes.

Shortly after, the ceremony began. It was so neat to look out over the audience and see all of our closest family and friends there for us! As each bridesmaid came down the aisle, my heart beat faster and faster. Then our pianist, Jessica, began playing Canon in D. The doors at the back of the aisle shut for a moment. Everybody stood. And as they reopened, I’m pretty sure I smiled bigger than I’ve ever smiled in my life; there was my gorgeous bride – she’s never looked so beautiful!! It was completely surreal. Our officiant, Alan, gave a beautiful sermon in which he urged us to exemplify Christ’s love for us in our own marriage – love that initiates, is sacrificial, and forgives. Hannah and I read both traditional vows and custom vows to one another (though apparently Hannah’s written-out vows nearly didn’t make it to the ceremony!), and our unity ceremony consisted of braiding 3 strands of rope representing me, her, and God, as Jessica sang God With Us. Then we exchanged rings, Alan pronounced us husband and wife, and just like that, we were married!!

We went down to the bridal suite to sign our marriage license and take a few pictures as the rest of our guests enjoyed cocktail hour. A waitress even came and brought us some of the appetizers we thought we were going to miss, and they were delicious! Truffle mac and cheese bites and beef wellington. Meanwhile, guests mingled, highlighted their favorite verses in a Bible we provided, wrote both serious and silly answers on advice cards, and signed our guest book. Then we took pictures with our bridal party and families, which was a bit chaotic, but we managed to salvage enough time for some shots of just the two of us before the reception began.

For our grand entrance, we danced in to Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars. Then we had our first dance, which actually began on the wrong song! We were both a little confused, but just started dancing anyway; thankfully Hannah’s sister-in-law Terrisa went up to correct the DJ and after a minute they put on our true first dance:  You’ve Got a Friend in Me, by Michael Buble. It’s such a fun song that represents my favorite thing about our relationship – our friendship – and we even threw in some fun choreography during a jazzy section of the song. Then Hannah’s father welcomed us all, gave a toast and a blessing, and dinner began. We had a delicious meal that included parmesan-stuffed flank steak, brown butter chicken, and sundried tomato gnocchi. We ate as quick as we could, then walked around while everyone else ate to personally thank them for coming. Then we had best man and maid/matron of honor toasts, father-daughter and mother-son dances, and then open dancing began. We were really excited to see that almost everyone danced at some point! I guess we owe the DJ (and probably also the open bar) the thanks for that!

After a bit, we played a newlywed game where the DJ asks Hannah and me questions like “Who’s the better driver?” and we each hold up a shoe representing our answer. Then we cut our cake and fed each other the first bites – and I refrained from smooshing the cake all over Hannah’s beautifully makeup-ed face. Then came the bouquet toss and garter retrieval/toss, which I had some fun with:  the song we chose was the theme to Mission: Impossible, so I had a few groomsmen stand around Hannah with little Nerf guns while I dodged their shots and used a bigger Nerf gun to take them down. I approached my laughing damsel in distress with a kiss on the hand before removing her garter – gotta keep it classy, right? – and then shot it into the crowd of single men. After an anniversary dance, we opened the floor to dancing again. At the end of the night, Hannah and I danced to another favorite of ours, When I Say I Do, by Matthew West, while our guests lined up outside for our sparkler exit. The sparkler exit was a really fun way to leave the venue, and unbeknownst to us, Brian and Nathan had prepared our getaway car with writing on the windows:  everything from “just married” to “honk” and “shotgun wedding”. Funny, of course, because a 14-month engagement is anything but a shotgun wedding!

We spent the night at a beautiful resort in Scottsdale called The Scott, and departed for our honeymoon the very next day! Our destination was Cancun, where we stayed at an awesome all-inclusive resort called Azul Sensatori for an entire week. We chose Cancun because it wasn’t somewhere we felt the urge to go sight-see or fill our days with excursions, so this let us just relax at the resort almost the entire time. We don’t normally vacation that way, so our honeymoon was the perfect opportunity to change our vacation style a bit!

The resort had several restaurants and bars, including a couple swim-up bars in the pools. Our favorite restaurant was called Tapaz; it was a Spanish-style restaurant where we were brought 7 courses of appetizers for our meal. Pretty fun dining experience!

Our room was awesome, too. We got upgraded (for free!) to one on the first floor right next to one of the pools, and we made great use of our prime location! We spent a lot of time lounging and reading on our patio, and when we got too hot we’d go grab a drink and swim in the pool for a bit. The room even had its own Jacuzzi! In the middle of the week we went to a spot just 30 minutes from the resort for some jet-skiing and a catamaran/snorkeling cruise. We also sat through a 2-hour timeshare sales pitch to get a 2-for-1 deal on a beachside couples massage! Score!

Hannah took her GoPro and made an awesome video (see below), so I’ll let that do the rest of the talking. In case the embedded video doesn't work, here's the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Ise1KK8dE

As you can tell, May was an incredible month. It’s amazing to finally call Hannah my wife. I love her with all my heart, and I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with her!

In case you’re wondering what the immediate future holds, I’ll fill you in a bit. Right now a lot is still up in the air. I haven’t yet landed a job, but we’re flying out to Denver for a few days this week to find an apartment. Assuming we’re successful, we’ll move there at the end of the month, though it really just depends on when our lease begins. We’ve been told that inexpensive housing is extremely competitive in Denver, so we would appreciate your thoughts and prayers as we search there this week! And regarding my job search as well. It’s difficult to be in the middle of so much transition and uncertainty, but we’re confident God will guide us and it’ll all work out soon!