The Ascherls. An Adventure in Love: The Engagement and Wedding

On Christmas of 2009 Garret purposed!

I knew it was coming because earlier that day we had been opening presents at Garret's sister's, Monique, house and he had me open his present last, which was a pajama set that i loved. Monique said "I thought you were going to....." and Garret interrupted and said "ssshhh be quite," I of course heard everything so I knew it was happening that day!

(before he purposed, that is my promise ring on my left-hand ring finger)

Garret and I decided a few days before Christmas that we wanted to go to Canada on Christmas because we had nothing to do after noon on Christmas, and also we had Enhanced drivers licenses which made it easy to go to Canada when ever we wanted. So we decided that was our plan. To stay the night in Canada and come back the next morning and go to the Latendresse (Garret's mom's side) family Christmas party the next day.

When we got to our hotel Garret was frantically searching for his parent's camera. At this point I had actually forgotten that he was going to purpose. So we looked for the camera for about a half hour before he found it in his bag. When we got up to our room we started looking for somewhere to eat because it was late and we hadn't had dinner yet. We couldn't find anything open and ended up going to a McDonald's.

When we got back to the hotel Garret said he had another gift for me. He handed me a card a cute and funny card. Inside it he wrote "I have a question for you." While i was reading the card garret had gotten into his bag and was now be hind me. When I turned around he was on one knee and had the ring box in his hand and said "will you marry me?" I said "Yes" and was so excited! I called my parents and then my best friend Kat and told them the great news (I guess they already knew he was doing it that day).

The next day we went to the Latendresse family Christmas party. When we walked in Garret's mom said that we should announce it, we both were shy and didn't want to. So she got everyone's attention and said "Garret has an announcement" and everyone looked at Garret and he looked at me and then said "Heather and I are getting married." Then everyone clapped and cheered....it was embarrassing.

The next week Garret had to go back to school at OSU and I went to find my wedding dress. I had one in mind that i liked a lot but because we were both in school and didn't work much we didn't have the money to buy it. So i took a picture of that dress in to David's Bridal and said I wanted one that was similar but from their $99 sale. I tried on a few dresses and then tried on one that I fell in love with. It was the dress that I had brought the picture of and cost $800 which i did not have. I ended up getting a different dress that i did not love but i liked, I think it was because i had just tried on my dream dress. (Now looking back I really liked the dress i chose and wouldn't have changed it for anything) Another week later i went back to George Fox and Garret and I started planning our

wedding.

(My engagement Ring)

Once back at school we attended an pre-marital weekend through my school. It was a one weekend long trip with a bunch of other engaged couples. It gave us a lot to think about for our future. We also did pre-marital counseling through Garret's close family priest Father Rowan. We talked about children and how they would be raised, and how our lives as a couple (one being catholic and the other a nondenominational christian) would pan out. We also had a meeting with Pastor Steve from my home church who taught us in an argument there is never a winner or a loser because you are a team and that when you are arguing try to identify why you keep making a circle of escalation and hurt feelings. I think during this time we learned a lot that helped us during our marriage.

(One of our many engagement pictures, this one is my favorite)

I was done with school for the year at the end of April and got to go home, earn some money for the wedding and finish up all the details. We decided to get married on June 18, 2010. It was actually because we did not have much of a choice. You see it was very important to Garret to get married by Father Rowan, but he was leaving June 19th for Europe, and Garret was in school until the week before. We also did not have much choice in the location of our wedding, this was because Garret is Catholic and you must be married in the Catholic church you attend (you can get it changed you just have to fill out a lot of paper work and it takes a lot of time which Garret did not have because of being in school). While I was home Garret and I decided that our colors would be yellow and white and we would have a western theme. Also because our wedding was not until 5:30 we decided just to do hor dourves in my in laws' yard. All the food was made by both our parents and was really yummy and Garret's mom made us a beautiful cake. Our wedding cost us only a total of $3,000-3,500 including everything, even the honeymoon.

(one of my favorite pictures, i was swinging our hands during a really long song during our wedding and Garret made us stop so i pouted and for an instant Garret pouted back, is shows the true us even during our wedding)