Southern Weddings

This weeks Southern Wedding of the Week comes to us from Georgia.  Our friends Whitney and Jesse from {Our Labor of Love} captured this fun wedding.  This couple is adorable!  We love how JR proposed.  He surprised her on Christmas day!  Christmas Morning at 6 am, JR arrived at Jennifer’s home in a Santa hat, firefighter pants and with a special gift.  I love this ring shot with the whole pecans in the Mason jar… just perfect!

How did the two of you meet? Tell us your story… After church a large group of friends were heading downtown for lunch. As we all headed out to the cars people started separating in groups to carpool. I ended up hopping in the back seat of my friend Wayne’s truck and you know who was in the front seat. I asked Wayne, “Who’s this guy?” and he said “This is my friend JR”. We started chatting about jobs and realized we both worked in emergency medicine and started exchanging horror stories. Then the hobbies, we found that we both loved the outdoors – backpacking, kayaking, mountain biking, the basics. From that point on we struck up a friendship with texting! After two months, all his friends were telling me “he is so into you” and all it took was one day of white water rafting and I was in love (hook, line and sinker).
Describe the proposal: I was on a travel nursing assignment back home in Columbus, Georgia. It was over the holidays and JR was supposed to be visiting his parents and sister in Nashville. It was 6:30 a.m. on Christmas morning and I heard the bell for the door (we have to buzz visitors into the back). I hit the unlock and started toward the door to direct what I thought was a visitor and instead found my sweetheart in his bunker pants(that’s what firefighters wear) and Santa hat with a wrapped PRESENT in his hand. I was so stunned! At 7:00 a.m. we walked out to the car and as we walked JR was telling me all kinds of sweet things. I remember thinking “It is sweet enough you made the trip down here, you don’t have to go on like this.” Then standing in the cold crisp dark early morning he got down on bended knee and asked if I would be his wife.
What attracted me to my husband was: His never ending sense of adventure and love for experiencing life. No matter if it sounds fun or dangerous or just plain gross, JR will try it-just to experience it. For example, on our honeymoon in Peru, Rr ate “cuy al horno”… that is guinea pig. What some call pet, others call dinner.
Why do you love your husband? I love JR because he is his own. Growing up with three older sisters, JR is very good at most things men are usually bad at… like communication. JR loves to communicate. He is concerned with my happiness and well-being, genuinely he cares and wants me to talk to him about all of my worries and problems. He is there to share my successes and encourage me through the failures. Also, he makes me laugh and that is something that will always get us through a hard time.
What attracted me to my wife was: Her sense of adventure and how she’s almost always laid back. On our first trip together, we were backpacking up a mountain and by the time we got to the top it was dark, snowing and about 30 degrees. (How many girls would do that and go again?) She also has a passion to learn, which I think is essential in life.
A date we went on that we’ll always remember: It was last October and about midnight. I was wide awake and bored. I called JR and we decided to carve pumpkins. He got up out of bed, came over and we headed to Wal-Mart. We picked out our pumpkins and spent the next couple hours on the front porch drawling and carving and building a stronger friendship.

Check back later for more from Jennifer + JR.