Yesterday afternoon Lea and I had our second session of pre-marital counseling with Pastor Dan Houck who will officiating our marriage. In this session we talked a lot about expectations and where they come from. The word “expectation” can be a challenging word to define, you find expectations all around you. Lea and I were challenged to think upon where our expectations come from, and what expectations we have on our married life together. I am thankful and encouraged that Lea and I have had little trouble communicating, even from our first date (just look at our monthly cell phone minutes)!

Over the last few months Lea and I spent time communicating on who will be expected to take out the trash, pay the bills, mow the lawn, cook dinner, and do the dishes. This is important because I believe that communication is about setting expectations. We each grew up under different roofs where our families handled things differently. If Lea and I are going to have a committed and healthy relationship we must be open to sharing our expectations for each other, for our future, and for our relationship. I find it challenging sometimes to do this because it is quite easy to ignore. To be honest, it can be difficult to share my expectations of Lea, a lot of that comes out of the fact that as soon as I speak, I realize how selfish I am. The important thing I see is that Lea and I must continue to strive towards communicating our expectations because anger and frustration are rooted in our unmet expectations. If I don’t communicate my expectations for Lea how will she ever know what they are?

Occasionally I have internally and externally gotten frustrated at Lea because she has not met my expectations in one way or another…the problem is I never spent the time to tell her what my expectation was. What I have learned is that sharing expectations requires honesty. We must be transparent with our spouse and others when communicating our expectations, it’s essential to having a healthy marriage.

How about all of our friends…how has expectations played a role in your dating, engaged, and married relationships?

After a few weeks of research and recommendations from many of our friends we have decided on a photographer for our wedding. We are excited to say that Daniel Mast a local photographer and a partner will be capturing our wedding and reception on June 12, 2010. In 2010 Daniel is stepping out on his own in the world of photography and his style and personality is a good match for Lea and I.

For me (Jeremy) choosing a photographer was a quite a big deal. When I first started looking seriously I quickly became overwhelmed by the number of local photographers and recommendations. Many were easy to sort through for me because of quality or price. After narrowing it down to a top 7 or 8 we were able to choose Daniel. He is a great guy to work with and was willing to create a custom package for us that suits our needs. Although Daniel does not have a lot of photos available on his website you can visit his website by clicking here. Lea and I will soon be scheduling an engagement session with Daniel and we are excited to share these photos with you all!

Lea and I officially began dating on January 6, 2006 when I took her to see the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe at the movie theater followed by a coffee at Starbucks! Since then it has been an exciting journey! Obviously you are most interested in hearing the story of the engagement itself but it is worth while mentioning how this thing all began almost 4 years ago. I can remember thinking to myself just a few months after we started dating that Lea would be the one that I would marry. Before very long discussions of spending our lives began to be a pretty regular part of our discussions. We both agreed that we would not marry until Lea finished her four year degree at Lancaster Bible College. We also agreed that we would not have one of those 2 or 3 year engagements!

So just a few weeks ago I got very serious about finding the ring and making the final plans to ask Lea to marry me! I ended up going and designing a ring with the help of Carole from Brent L Miller Jewelers. I would highly recommend this Jeweler. The experience and service was fantastic! Anyway, there are obviously hundreds of ring designs available today. I knew that I wanted something simple but something that was a little unique. Thankfully I was able to find that combination!

On Friday November 6, 2009 I left the office early to go pick up the ring and do some final preparations for the special day! I had arranged with Lea earlier in the week that we would go on a photo-shoot. We had been hoping to get some fall photos, and with me getting a new camera (Canon 7D) it seemed to be the perfect set up! Thankfully Lea had an appointment at school and a planned shopping trip in the afternoon, this gave me access to ask Phil (Lea’s Dad) for permission to have Lea’s hand in marriage. Not more then 30 minutes before Lea arrived home I had a special and meaningful conversation with Lea’s Father where he granted me permission to ask Lea to marry me!

Lea arrived to her house where she met me and we headed out on our photo-shoot. We headed to seven streams just a few miles from her house. This is a place we had hiked before, in fact it is the place we went on our very first hike together. As we walked along the path we took many photos of each other individually and with the two of us using the handy dandy tripod. Realizing that it was getting dark rather quickly I made a suggestion to climb a hill. We climbed the hill so that we could get to more light. Once at the top of the hill we proceeded to take many more photos and enjoy the setting sun. After Lea almost hurried me along by finding the ring in my coat pocket I got down on one knee and asked for her hand in marriage. And of course, she said YES! After dating for 46 months to the day we were finally going to get married! You can read Lea’s version of the engagement by clicking here.

We took many more photos and celebrated this special day. You can see a gallery of photos by clicking here. When we arrived back at the car I had a dozen red roses awaiting her arms. We quickly scurried to her house to share the news and excitement with her family and then our friends via many exciting phone calls. Besides the question “when are you getting married” the most common response was “finally!” Finally indeed, we are engaged!

Welcome to our website! We are just getting the site under way as we prepare to officially begin our lives together when we marry in June of 2010. We plan to use this website to update our family and friends on our progress in planning our upcoming wedding. This blog will also serve as a record of this wonderful journey. We are bound to have great stories and memories along the way. We hope to share those memories with photos, videos, and words. Feel free to leave comments on the blog. We love to hear from you, whether it be a helpful tip on wedding prep or just on life in general, we are excited to share this journey with you!

Feel free to follow our blog through email updates delivered automatically to your inbox. You can subscribe by clicking here or by using the links above. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed through your favorite reader by clicking here. If you have no idea what any of that means, just keep coming back to our site for the latest news and updates on our wedding!