SST: Luis and Maria's Wedding

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

For many people (around 30 million, to be more specific), General Hospital's Luke and Laura had the ultimate 80's TV wedding. However, for those of us who were seven in 1988, that wedding's cultural impact was completely eclipsed by the wedding of Luis and Maria on Sesame Street. They built up to the wedding for months and I remember having an incredible sense of anticipation leading up to the actual event. It's weird to think of Sesame Street pulling something akin to a ratings stunt, but I was definitely glued to my TV, so it must have worked. You can see the wedding ceremony here - I couldn't figure out how to shorten this super-long clip when embedding, plus that clip has far too much Elmo to slide past my usual no-Elmo policy (although Elmo's fear of dropping the rings was the only part of the wedding that I actually remembered, aside from the general rooftop setting).



Still, Luis/Maria is only my second-favorite Muppet-related wedding of the 80's:



Note: I may or may not have sung that song to Amy when I proposed to her :)

Our Story

My poor blog has been a casualty of the major upheavals in my life in the past few months. For those of you who don't already know, in mid-February I got engaged to Amy Jeppsen. In mid-March I left my job at Yahoo!, moved away from Oregon, and moved into an apartment in Orem, Utah to be close to her. And in less than three weeks were are getting married.

I recently wrote a few short pieces about our dating and engagement story for our wedding website, and I thought I would cheat by having them double as a blog post:

First Date:

Amy and I used to be part of an informal group that occasionally got together to play games on Sunday nights in Michigan. On one particular occasion the boys in the group began planning a group date and Amy, the only female present that night, took advantage of the opportunity to suggest that one of the boys present could potentially ask her out. At that point I had been thinking for a while that I would have liked to ask Amy out, and as we came up with a plan for a hypothetical group date I was simultaneously excited because I finally had an excuse to ask her out (I was pretty shy about that) and threatened by every guy in that room because I thought they might try to ask Amy before I could. So right as the game night broke up I made a beeline for Amy so I could ask her out before they had a chance. 

The group date turned out to be a visit to a cider mill (a Fall rite of passage in the Midwest) for fresh doughnuts & apple cider, and then a trip to a corn maze. At the outset of the corn maze there was a small stand where they were selling coloring books filled with fun facts about corn. Each time we reached a checkpoint in the corn maze I rewarded the group by reading a fun fact about corn.

Our first date grew out of a group game night, so to reduce it to game night terms: Brian and Amy, in the corn maze, with the coloring book.

Engagement:

By my reckoning, Amy and I had two engagements separated by one month, 800 miles, and two holidays that we barely missed spending together. The first engagement happened when Amy came up from Utah to see me in Portland over her birthday weekend back in February. We had a great time together visiting the Oregon coast, dancing to a live Brazilian forró band, and meeting my friends and family that lived in Oregon. Over that weekend it became pretty clear to both of us that we were going to get married eventually, but I anticipated that we would continue our long-distance courtship as we had done up to that point – every few weeks one of us would take a trip out to see the other as we continued our courtship. However, on the day before Valentine’s Day as we embraced in the car together before I dropped her off at the airport, I unexpectedly found myself saying, “So, we’re going to get married, right?” She said yes, and I told her that I would propose for real with the ring and everything later. She then got on the plane back to Utah and I immediately called my parents and sisters to tell them the news, after which I panicked because I wasn’t sure if Amy knew I was serious. But I called her that evening and much to my relief, she did know I was serious, and yes, she really did want to marry me.

The second, official engagement happened a month later, just a day after I had wrapped up my life in Oregon and arrived in Utah with my car filled with all my belongings. It was just a few days after Pi Day (3/14), which is a big day for math-savvy folk like Amy. So to commemorate the missed holiday I took her to The Pie, my favorite pizza place in Salt Lake, and then across the street to Gardner Hall, the building where I had all my music classes at the University of Utah. I took her on a tour of the building, ending in the spacious atrium where a small table with two pies (pumpkin, Amy’s favorite, and chocolate silk) had been set up by my friends Anthony and Desiree. As Amy ate her pie, I pulled out my guitar and serenaded her, and then got down on one knee, gave her the ring, and asked her to marry me. There was a concert in the building that night so there were quite a few people milling around us as all this was happening, but fortunately Amy still said yes.

Amy and I after right after she finished her marathon last Saturday

Favorite Memories of Amy:

Amy and I have known each other for about four and a half years now, and during that time we have had plenty of adventures and fun memories:

• Spring break road trip in 2010 to Atlanta (world’s largest aquarium, hiking Stone Mountain, and Varsity hot dogs), Huntsville, AL (NASA space camp), and Nashville (Honky Tonk Row, the Parthenon, Andrew Jackson’s plantation)
• Two trips to Cedar Point, even though Amy doesn’t love roller coasters like I do
• Convincing Amy to play hooky and go see Coraline while working on her dissertation (and spilling a carton full of blueberries all over the movie theater floor)
• Amy attending every “Brian Presents:” film presentation since the beginning of the Michigan era
• Co-inventing Choco Ramen (uncooked ramen coated in chocolate and peanut butter – trust me, it’s awesome) at FHE
• Sprinting several blocks alone back to a restaurant in downtown Salt Lake to rescue Amy’s purse for her
• Sneaking into a performance of The Pirates of Penzance through the stage door
• Awaking one Easter morning to a scavenger hunt surprise prepared by Amy
• Watching seven seasons of Buffy together over the course of a year
• Amy making me a birthday mix CD that opened with “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” (inside joke – trust me, it was hilarious)
• Amy fulfilling one of my lifelong dreams by giving me a Gatorade shower (she’s a good sport and has a good sense of humor)
• Sitting beside Amy at a Jazz-Pistons game in Detroit and explaining the proceedings
• Amy making math study guides for my GMAT preparation that included story problems about Breaking Bad and Buffy characters
• Seeing a Brazilian film at the Sundance Film Festival together and meeting the director
• Amy explaining the logic behind dividing fractions at a ward talent show in Michigan
• Amy and I getting married in the Bountiful Temple on May 25 (projected)