Temple Marriage Night!

A couple weeks ago we did the greatest mutual night ever! It was probably so awesome because I LOVE wedding dresses and love weddings in general. Trying on dresses for my own wedding was one of the joys of my life! I even considered going to short trade school to be a be a certified wedding planner. haha. SO... I love weddings. So when we put together this activity, I was very excited. And fortunately for us, the whole evening went off without a hitch. Not every YM/YW activity you plan goes the way you'd like it too. Trust me, I know. haha. But this one turned out just the way we wanted it to. I have to say that it wouldn't have happened it weren't for my AMAZING mother!! We raided her craft closets and cupboards AND she spent the whole day the day before baking home made from scratch cupcakes that were to DIE for delicious. They were SO good!! She is incredible and I will be forever grateful to her! (For LOTS of reasons, but today it's about this!! It couldn't have been this amazing without her help.)  

So, here is how it all went down! We decorated the Relief Society room to look like a mini wedding reception. 

(Sorry that I'm in the pic! haha. My mom likes them better with people. :) ) 

So this is one side of the room. The cupcakes are on all those little stands. 

I wanted everything to be white but the cupcakes were actually a cinnamon coffee cake and a home made brownie all with white frosting. OMG they were divine!!! 

This pic is the other side of the room. Those pictures are a bunch of the leaders in their dresses and some of my sisters that my mother had taken. She is an amazing photographer! I wish she had been available for MY wedding. haha. She took all the photos that are on this blog today too. 

So the program went a little like this... We had all the girls come knowing they were going to listen to a panel of women answer questions and try on dresses, so they came w their hair and make up done. What they didn't know, is that I was going to have 2 special guests! Credit for this idea has to go to my dad.. He said when he was a young adult, they had an activity where two gorgeous young women come and told them what they were looking for in the many they wanted to marry. So we tried to do the same thing! We tried to find the handsomest most mature young men we could find and we did!!! They were actually not single though. We decided that they should be married so they could talk about what they were looking for, and why they chose to marry her, and why they did it in the temple. And they did a great job. They are the little brothers of my hubby's mission companion and both played football for BYU. They did a great job and the girls were drooling!! I'm pretty sure I heard a few of them gasp as they came in the room and they were definitely whispering and looking. haha. 

 This is them...

Handsome, right?! haha. They were great and I still owe them big!

So after the boys spoke, we had the panel of ladies answer questions. They were things like "Why not have a boyfriend in high school?" and "What is your favorite thing about your husband?" and "How do you know when you've found 'the one?'" The girls wrote questions and put them in a jar for the whole month before. Their questions were mixed with my questions and put in a jar for them to pull out randomly. I tried to keep the fringe questions out because I didn't want this to be about divorce or gay marriage or anything like that. I know those things are important, but I wanted this to be about the ideal marriage. And the ladies did great! They made the girls laugh and had great things to say. Honestly the whole activity could have been just them!

I cute them off about 30 minutes into the questions, (we only got to 5 or 6) so we could go in and do the fun part! We had collected dresses from ladies in the ward and people's sisters and ended up with out about 12 dresses. Fortunately we had some of every size and all different styles. We hung the dresses on the back of those sliding chalkboards they have at the church. The other side of those boards are pin boards so they wouldn't get chalk on them. They looked like this... 

I heard a few more audible gasps when they walked into the room to see all these dresses. Some girls were more outwardly excited than others, But they all seemed to love it! And us leaders LOVED helping them try them on!

So they tried on the dress and then got to have a little mini photo session with my mom. We used this as the backdrop for the pics... 

The picture is one i had hanging in my house. It's of the Jordan River Temple. The black back drop is two table cloths pinned to another one of the rolling chalk boards and the divider thingy was from my mom's house. The little pedestal was from the primary room podium but we didn't end up using it. I don't think we used the stool that's sitting there either, but we thought we might, so they were there. haha. 

Anyway, my mom spent a couple minutes with each girl in their dress and took some amazing pictures. I wish I could show them to you, but it's a bit of a surprise! I'm going to do a whole lesson on it and hopefully give the girls a copy of their best photo. When we finally do that, I'll show you the pics cuz some of them turned out really beautiful!

The moral of the story is that we were trying to get the girls excited about the prospect of temple marriage, of ETERNAL marriage! I'm so grateful to be a member of the church and have the opportunity to be sealed to my hubby not just for time, but for all eternity. I love him more than life itself and wouldn't have it any other way. I'm also extremely grateful for the girls that I get to work with and how amazing they are. They teach me something new every time I see them and I hope I get to stay working with them for a long time!!