Our Story
- Kirsten Stavast
- Aug 27, 2024
- 7 min read
Everyone thinks that their story is the 'best' and while I'm not saying that's wrong -- I definitely am biased towards mine and Tyler's story!;) Even if I'm the only one who ever reads and rereads this page, I just really have wanted to type it all out to remember! Here goes nothing!
We * technically * met September 4, 2020. It was move-in day, and my roommates and I went around knocking on everyone's doors in our building to introduce ourselves and start meeting people, our group getting bigger and bigger as we went! Tyler's door was one of the last doors we went to -- and so while I remember him from that, there was so many people that Tyler doesn't explicitly remember me from the group (thank goodness we have a photo though!).
We slowly became apart of the same friend group that first semester (my first semester of college, and his first semester back from his LDS mission!). Since we were becoming such good friends, I didn't really think anything romantic would ever happen and so I started confiding in Tyler, telling him what I was stressed about, my business ideas, and how I felt like I wasn't meeting any guys that were 'it'. (lol)
Even though Tyler was starting to like me, he suggested we make a list of what I'd like in a guy. We typed out what I wanted and my deal breakers -- and that was that. Except, on Tyler's end, he realized I had just described him! Looking back and rereading the list, it is so funny how oblivious I was, but thank goodness things worked out how they did!
Spring semester started and our friend group was closer than ever, with the list of inside jokes growing and growing. For some reason (probably because we were starting to like each other), Tyler and I kept joking about him proposing as a joke/becoming fake engaged. This plot wasn't unique to Tyler and I -- my roommates and friends would all joke around about being married too/dating each other -- but ours is the one that stuck!
One night, out of boredom, a few of us decided to drive from Cedar City to Las Vegas. While the trip was overall pretty anti-climatic (we drove the 3 hours, walked around for about an hour, and then came back home), one of my favorite parts of my life happened. I told Tyler it would be funny if he fake proposed while we in Vegas and then we saw how many people back at school we could trick. So, we got fake engaged at the strip. He got down on one knee, and we used one of our friends rings she was wearing. Some guys in a car on the street yelled at me to say no as my friends yelled back to say yes. The video is pretty cringy and obviously NOT real (our body language is a super dead giveaway LOL) but we snapped some photos and I posted them on my finsta at the time to see who would fall for our trick.
While some of my friends had a good reason to fall for our 'prank' (they didn't go to college with us and weren't in the loop -- I'm sorry for the confusion!!), a surprising number of people in our circle believed us! They told us that they knew Mormons got married quickly, they just didn't realize it was that quick.
We kept the joke up for a while, but don't worry, we told people not too long after. However, people don't really joke about things like that unless they at least have a little bit of a crush on each other. Tyler told some of our friends he was thinking of * actually * asking me out -- for real, for real. When they asked me, I was embarrassed to admit how bad I did want him too, but I didn't want it to not actually work out or ruin our friend group in any way. I tried to make it seem like I thought it was weird he wanted to ask me out without explicitly saying no, but they passed on my message that I 'wasn't interested.' I was freaking out! Why did I just tell them no, when I did like him back?? (Thank you Laurel for listening to me on FaceTime when that happened).
Thankfully for me, Tyler didn't listen to our friends and asked me out anyway. We went on our first date a few days later and then we spent every day together after that (it was helpful we lived in the same building!!).
On our second date, we walked to a cute little cafe I loved on Cedar City's main street. Since our relationship was basically started as a joke, I still felt like it was a bit... unpredictable? We sat down and got our water, and then Tyler got up to go ask the waitress something. I'm not going to lie, I was nervous he would fake propose again (funny at the LV strip, but not on a dinner date).
Tyler came back and said, 'Hey, we need to go' and hurried me out of the restaurant. Everyone was looking at us, and I had no idea what was happening. I honestly felt so embarrassed. We hadn't ordered anything yet, but still! That is just a strange thing to do! I was wondering if maybe he just had decided he didn't want to eat there after all ? But then Tyler reassured me that he had asked the workers to save our table. Huh? He confessed he had wanted to take me to a cute boutique near by and surprise me by letting me pick out some earrings, but once we got to the restaurant, he realized that the boutique would close before we were done eating. We picked out my earrings and went back to dinner. What a strange but fun night!
Tyler officially asked me to be his girlfriend on Valentine's: February 14, 2021. Yay! He had the fun idea to make kabobs on a grill behind our building... except, neither of us had any idea what to do! Our kabobs were NOT turning out and the weather was starting to go south, we called up a friend to see if he could help, promising some of the food in return. He came out, and said that kabobs were just not going to work out and so we went inside and he turned the ingredients into some kind of stew instead! Half way through eating, our friend realized that our meal was supposed to be a date -- He thought we were still joking about being together! Now, its our Valentine's day tradition to have kabobs. <3
That summer (2021) we did long distance. That was the worst 4 months! We did get some cheesy bracelets that we both wore, and when one person touched theirs, the other's would vibrate! Thankfully, that summer came to end and we both ended up in Cedar City again.
In Cedar City, there's honestly not a lot to do on a day to day, so Tyler and I decided to try and go to every single restaurant there! I had made an Instagram account to track it all, and we would take pictures of our food -- no ratings, just checking them off our list.
Because of long distance and other things that came up, we had never really celebrated anything together, so Tyler decided to make our 8 month anniversary a bit of a bigger deal and plan a date for us! Of course, I was game. However, leading up to our date, I had a sneaky suspicion that Tyler might take advantage of this date to propose! We had definitely talked about getting married, but I didn't think he would propose until at least December. Because I couldn't hold it in, I asked Tyler if that was his plan. Not wanting to ruin the surprise, he convinced me that there was no way that was going to happen! And so we went on with our lives.
The day of our date, I was swamped with homework and trying to get on top of it all. I was excited for our date but was wondering if maybe we should just keep it short. On his way home from work, Tyler called me and we just chatted and talked about our plan. For some reason, he was in a mood -- and Tyler is the most easy going, patient person I know! When he came to get me, he didn't even get out of the car, and I was starting to think that I wasn't sure if I wanted to hangout with him if he was in a bad mood! (Turns out he was just too nervous to get out of the car!)
We get to the restaurant (remember that cafe I mentioned before? it was that same place!) and sat down to order. Tyler kept reminding me that we needed to make sure we got a picture before we ate for our bucket list. Hmmm okay, but I'm hungry! When our food was finally brought out, Tyler asked our waitress to take our photo. As she's taking it, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. For a split second, I thought he was being silly and I was going to get mad at him! And then I realized it was for real for real -- I knew it! Which, unfortunately, is what I said. But don't worry! I still said yes!
When we were planning our wedding, we knew we wanted to start it with a bang! I've been to a lot of good wedding receptions, but we also wanted to cut out a lot of things because, honestly, we just didn't feel like it! And maybe as a joke, I can't remember, we thought -- what if we just have a giant pool party?
And so, we did!
We were sealed and married at the Draper Utah LDS temple June 14, 2022. Did you notice we became official, got engaged, and married all on the 14th of their respective months? Yep, that was on purpose.
We had a great luncheon with our families (thanks Mom & Dad!) and then later that night, we had our pool party! It was seriously the best day of my life, it felt like nothing went wrong! You know how time goes by faster when you're having a good time? Well, thankfully for us, it was the exact opposite! I kept checking the clock, nervous the night was about to end, and only a minute or two had passed. It was the best day!
We just hit our 2 year wedding anniversary this summer and we're about to hit 4 years of knowing each other this fall -- it has all gone by so quickly but I am so grateful to have Tyler in my life. I love you, Tyler! And to anyone else who read this, thank you for indulging me, I hope you enjoyed getting more of a peak into our lives and our story:) I think it's been pretty grand!
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