8 Things About My Marriage

I’ve been tagged, (my first tag!) by my friends, Holly and Lacie to answer some questions about how I met, fell in love and married Jason. Here goes…

8 Things About My Marriage



1. Where did you meet your husband? We met while we were both attending Harding University in Arkansas. We knew who the other was, but we didn’t actually meet until the end of our college careers.

2. What was the first thing you said? I’m not sure what I said. I’m sure it was something clever and witty, like “So you’re Jason Stansell, the guy all the girls in the dorm talk about.” Let’s just say he was a secret crush of some girls I knew.

3. Where was your first date? One of my friends, Claire, asked me to go to Memphis with her and her friend, Todd, to see a concert. She was friends with Todd, but liked him as more than a friend and wanted me to go for moral support. Jason tagged along with Todd, so I guess we were the tag-alongs for their “date”. We drove to Memphis State (or was it University of Memphis?) in Todd’s tiny Mitsubishi 3000GT to see the Gin Blossoms/Dishwalla in concert (yes, this was ages ago, when these bands were actually popular!) After the concert, we ate ribs in downtown Memphis off Beale Street at a restaurant called ‘The Rendezvous’.

Here is a picture of Jason and I on our “first date” (thankfully, my friend, Claire, thought this was an important enough event to take a picture!) I think I knew then that we were meant to be together, since he was as big a goofball as I was.

After this date, we started hanging out a lot, doing things together with our friends, Claire and Todd. Here we all are on the top of Sugarloaf Mountain. Note: I’m hanging onto Todd’s arm and Claire’s touching Jason’s hand. Don’t ask me what’s going on, because I’m not really sure…(Todd was just a friend, but maybe Claire had a secret crush on Jason?…Hmmm)

First kiss?
It was towards the end of that year, we went to a music festival in Memphis, called ‘Memphis in May’ (I guess we were both really into concerts back then!) and had our first kiss at a club in downtown Memphis called, ‘616’ (yes, I was a ‘party girl’ back then). I’ll have to say that it was the best kiss I ever had—I think we both felt weak in the knees then.

4. Long or short courtship? We went out on a couple of dates April/May of 1996, but had to go back home from college for the summer. We corresponded with a few letters and phone calls, but didn’t reconnect until the Summer of 2007, when we both discovered we were back in Arkansas for summer school. After that, we dated for about 2 1/2 years before we actually got married.

5. Where were we engaged? Jason proposed to me at my apartment on Memorial Day 1999. I was living in Arkansas finishing up grad school and he was living and working in Houston at the time. He came up to visit me and proposed. He also did the traditional thing by calling and asking my dad for my hand in marriage.

6. Where were we married? We were married at my home church in Collinsville, Illinois, January 15, 2000 by Jason’s grandfather, Delton Haun. Delton just recently passed away, so it was very special to have had that memory of him performing our ceremony.
You can imagine how cold it was in Illinois that time of the year. I'm sure Jason's family was freezing when they camp up for the wedding. I remember being really nervous about his family coming up for the wedding, because my family and his family had never met. Since they were traveling so far, my mother offered to put them up at our house. Luckily, everyone got along and remained good friends afterwards.

7. Where was the reception? The reception was in the church’s fellowship hall. My mom pretty much catered the entire reception for 100-150 people (she was amazing!)

8. Where was your honeymoon? We went to San Antonio for our honeymoon. Since Jason was working for a terrible company at the time (Sysco!), he only had about four or five days off of work for our wedding and honeymoon, so we had to make it quick. We did have a wonderful time for the amount of time we were there. After that, I was an official Texan.

Here’s us at the Tower of Americas in San Antonio on our honeymoon. I was skinny then (sigh…

good times, good times!)

Thanks for the tag, Holly and Lacie! It’s been fun walking down memory lane again.
I tag Deanna, Robyn and Heather. You’re it!