Our transitional Amish Wedding

Okay, we had an all-day wedding, so it was from morning till evening. Hey everyone, welcome back. Joas and I decided to take a quick date night, like a quarantine date night. Go through the drive-thru and get something to eat and then we'll share about our wedding and our transition coming out of the Amish. Sounds good, but I can't share anything until I've had some food in my stomach. Hey there, just be one minute. Can I have a double quarter pounder with cheese? Just the sandwich. Okay. That'll be it, thanks. That will be $18.30 at the first window. Thank you. I'm telling you, the price of McDonald's ain't what it used to be. It's over nine bucks a piece and there's no tax. Montana has no sales tax. Well, after sitting in the drive-thru for about 30 minutes or longer, we finally realized they don't take credit cards. Yeah, it was a long line. Yeah, a long line. So the only other recourse we had was a double quarter pounder with cheese. So there we go. Well, our stomachs are full of junk food, but it was good. So we sat in a drive-thru line because all the restaurants obviously are closed because of the quarantine. So we sat in a drive-thru for like 30 minutes because there was a long line of cars at this restaurant we wanted. And we got up there, there was a little sticky note that said, sorry, our credit card machine is down, cash only. So we had no cash with us, so we had to leave. And then we decided rather than just to wait, wait, wait, we'll go to McDonald's. So we hit McDonald's. But today we're just going to talk with you a little bit about maybe six months before we were married, some of the transitions we went through. And our wedding, yep. And so where do we start? There's so much to tell and we'll just kind of share our lives a little at a time, I guess. As you know, we grew up, you know, driving horse and buggy. And whenever we wanted to go someplace, we would hire a driver that would come to our place, pick us up and take us to town or wherever that might have been. And we started driving. We married in June and the February before our marriage, so a few months before we started driving cars, which was really nice for us because we went on our honeymoon then at that point with the car that I had bought, which was just going from, you know, I was 24 when we got married and Priscilla, you were 21, right? And having, you know, not been able to drive all our life. It was a big change. Yeah, it was really special to be able to drive. But I want to also say that when we decided to drive, I actually did not, I didn't want to do that. I mean, you might not understand that, but growing up, I didn't like change a lot. I'm still not a big person for change, but I realized there's a lot of things in life that just change that we have to change. But that was just, it just felt like when we start, if we start driving, things will change so rapidly that we won't be able to contain just the family and just a lot of things. You were maybe afraid that important things would. Yeah, and I want to say that I, it's definitely changed the dynamics of it. I mean, it really has. In one way, I feel like it's made us a lot busier than when we, we just didn't go anywhere. We would read books in the evening and we didn't have phones or, you know, anything like that. So it was definitely a slower lifestyle than it is now. But it wasn't just like, it wasn't like just him and I decided to drive. It was the whole community actually came into agreement. Right. Well, I'm going to start way back, I think. So when we moved to Libby, my dad had a vision to go to start an Amish community where there would be a place where he could freely worship God in the way that he felt like the Bible thought it might say. And it wasn't where there was just, you know, a preacher and a bishop and they would just do the thing and everybody else was kind of like, you know, like sheep without a voice type of thing. Yeah. So that's why he moved to Libby. And then it just started transition. It was a lot of years, a number of years, and we had a phone in our house and then things just progressed a little bit at a time. I'd say there was never a quick change of like, now we're Amish and then we're going to leave the Amish. Which I believe was very important for us because just a slow transition helped us. How would you say it? Not just throw everything to the wind. Yeah. Not just, we just kind of, we went slowly enough that we kind of knew what was important and what was not. You know. Right. You know, from our perspective, at least. Right. Yeah. And when, typically when the Amish, when you leave the Amish and let's say you start driving cars, the Amish will actually excommunicate you. It goes through a shunning and like, they will no longer, you can't eat with them at their table. They won't, they will basically treat you as someone that's a heathen or somebody that doesn't know the Lord. But because our change was so gradual, they never did that to us. So we never, as a community, were never shunned, were never banned, never excommunicated. Not shunned some, I would say, but never excommunicated. So. It wasn't official excommunication, but a lot of the Amish still treated us like that. They would still, they would. But there was never, because there was no official verdict given, there is a lot of leeway. And so that has given us, that hasn't severed all our ties with, with our relatives, which is a good thing. Yeah. But for my family though, years ago when my dad and mom came out of some of the Amish traditions and we were excommunicated from a lot of our family, like cousins and relatives. So as I mentioned, the Amish didn't actually officially abandon us. So that, that gave us a lot of leeway. We actually, at our wedding day, we had, you know, a fair bit of relatives from back East come to our wedding. Some of my cousins and Priscilla's family was a lot more conservative. So like she had no relatives. I had no Amish relatives coming, no. But I had a number of them come to our wedding and we did, Priscilla and I kind of, it seems like in our life, we have been pioneers in a lot of areas. And one of those things we've just noticed in just, not that we were trying to be pioneers, it's just kind of like, it seems like we are a little bit sometimes. And one of those things was we, we did some things different in our wedding. There hadn't been a wedding for a lot of years. Yeah, for about four years, I think. Oh, was that all there was? Okay. A number of years. And during that time there was some transition, obviously. And so Priscilla, you can say some of the things that we did on our wedding day that was different than, than traditional. So one thing that we did different was, uh, I wore a white dress and I of course made it myself. It probably didn't cost more than, the material probably didn't cost more than 50, 50, 40 or $50 at the most. Yeah. So, and I made it myself and, uh, it still looks somewhat, you know, Amish or Mennonite, but I, I really, I dreamed of wearing a white dress and, and my dad said that I could do that. And so that was a big deal to me. Now, Amish girls will usually just, they will just wear their best dress or they will make a new dress, but it will be usually just, um, you know, a color maybe that they like, but it, you know, it can't be. Can't be white. No, can't be white. Can't be red. Can't be anything like that. It's like blue, blues and greens and browns and, you know, just, that's the colors they use. Shades of purple or something. Different shades of lavender, maybe. So I got to wear a white dress and I also wore a homemade veil that I made and just kind of a veiling, you know, that I tied in the back and instead of a, an Amish cap. So that is, uh, what I changed. The other thing, uh, that we did not have the liberty to do was to take photos at our wedding. Um, and that was still kind of a no-no at that time. We, we did actually get a non-Amish person, yes, to take pictures. Yes, we did get, so we have, we have quite a few pictures, but, you know, it was no professional pictures of any kind. One thing that we did that was very unusual was we played some music when we walked out of the church. Right. And that was, um. Yeah, that was a no-no as an Amish, like. Well, let's, let's tell them a little bit about how our service was. So everybody showed up at, at 10 o'clock the service started, right? Or 930 or what was, I don't remember what time it was. I'm not sure, but somewhere around 10. Between 9 and 10 o'clock it was. It was like a two-hour service for sure. At least, yeah. Yeah, like a two-hour service. Lots of songs. We sang some German songs. Yep. And then we also did some English songs, which usually they wouldn't do that in Amish weddings. And I think my brother, who's a minister, spoke for some time. And then your dad, which was also a minister, married us. And then. Yeah. And also, I, we did not do much, uh, decorating. We, I, I think I, we didn't do any decorating up on the, up on where we got married. Because that was something we didn't do. But we did at the, the door where we walked in, we did some decorating. And then down in our reception, we did some. Well, we married in Bonner's Prairie, Idaho, where Priscilla was from. And we didn't really have facilities anywhere over there large enough. So we, um, her dad rented the Mennonite, uh, church house. So we actually had it in the Mennonite church house, which was very nice facilities. It was really nice. Yeah. And it was a beautiful June day. It was the most perfect day you could ask for. It was just, it was in the 70s or 80s. I'm not sure. It was warm. Yeah. It was just, it wasn't too warm and not too, you know, chilly. And just clear and sunny and beautiful. And how many people did we have at our wedding? I think it was a little over 200. Is that it? Yeah. We, we were thinking it might be 250, but I think it was quite a bit less. Not as many as I thought. So once we were married and we walked out after a couple hours service, then we went, um, we had the food downstairs and I had made, um, I'll show you a picture of the corner that I had made it. So the back, yeah, the backdrop, you might say we sat at a, us two, along with our bridesmaids and groomsmen. Yeah. So who, who were they? Tell them who they were. It was, um, I had my sister, my younger sister, Emily, as my bridesmaid and probably my maid of honor. And although we didn't say it back then like that and, and his sister Leona, older sister Leona and my brother Benjamin for a groomsman and also your cousin Michael. Right. And the funny thing is, um, Michael and Emily are now married. So that was nice that they had not been dating or anything at all at that time. But Michael had been my best friend. So he was, uh, the groomsman for me and Priscilla had Emily for her sister. So we put them together and now they're married. But, uh, we'll see. So we had a, we had a nice lunch. We fed everybody. It was a lot of good food and they treated us well. It was really surreal because we'd been to many weddings where we served. It's, it's an honor to be a server or be part of the wedding. So we would get a lot of times when your cousins get married, you would be invited to their weddings. And so many times I'd gone to weddings, so it was very surreal sitting there and all these people were serving us and serving the, all the people that were there. It was just like this weird feeling to see everything happen. We could just sit there and enjoy the day. Yeah. And we had two meals that we served. Yeah. And, and we had food like, you know, um, potato casseroles and meatballs and, um, broccoli salad and, and like desserts like Jimmy Carter pudding, which is this chocolatey peanut buttery dessert. And evenings we had this, um, angel food cakes with these, this creamy frosting and, and like the really good food. Yeah. It was just good food at this time. It was two o'clock or so lunch was over and then I, then we opened gifts. So everybody typically brought, brings a gift, uh, every family or person. Oh yeah. Family unit. So that all that afternoon we opened gifts for like several hours. And then by that time it was dinnertime again. And then, so we had dinner and then we sang songs. We had like a songbook that we made with all our favorite songs in it. So we sang songs for like an hour. Yeah. And by that time it was quite late. And then we gave all the servers and the cooks their gifts because they served all day long. And wow. But we made, I think we made the servers this. We made everything I think. Yeah. These bookends. Yeah. So I, what I did is I, at that time I raised birds, pheasants. So I took some of my pheasants that I had killed or whatever, and I took pheasant feathers and I cut out these hearts out of, um, oak and some other wood. Anyways, I made these hearts. I cut them all out. Three hearts. And I glued them together. And then we put these pheasant feathers on there. And then Priscilla wrote their name and the date on there. And then for the witnesses, we gave them larger hearts, like larger bookends. And then why did we give the cooks? I think I just bought some stuff for them. Okay. Yeah. It took a long time to make the gifts, but they were basically free. That's tradition. You give the servers. Yeah, give gifts. Yeah. And how much did we spend on our wedding? I know I didn't spend very much in a, in the Amish tradition. Again, the father of the bride typically pays most of the expenses. And so he paid for the food and he paid for a lot of things, which I was so thankful for. So we really have no idea how much we spent on food or on this, the wedding itself. I mean, I didn't spend a whole lot. I made our backdrop and we made the gifts and all those things mainly just took time. Your dad probably spent, I mean, I don't even know. But between the food and the rent for the building, I mean, there was a thousand dollars. I mean, I can't see more than two thousand. Yeah. I spend a little bit on flowers and stuff, but not much. Right. I think we bought all the gifts for like this, the gifts that we didn't make for the cooks. I mean, there was expenses, but it wasn't radical. But it was definitely cheaper than most people. Got married on a Friday. So this sounds kind of crazy, but on a Saturday we went back. So we went to a motel for the night on Friday night. And then the next morning we went back to clean up after our own wedding. So it took like half a day to clean up. And the youth came back and we cleaned up. And then that was Saturday. That was just something you always do. Yeah, you're obligated to do. But now they don't do that anymore. They just leave and you never see them again. But we worked. Make that point. So, yeah, we cleaned up. And then in the afternoon we came to our little cabin that we were going to live in. And this was a cabin in Libby. And I'll show you a picture of it. It was a really cute little cabin. It was about 12 feet wide and about 18 feet long, probably. And it had one little partition wall in it. It was really tiny. But it was some of the best times. It was just... We didn't have a lot of... We didn't have expenses. The bathroom wasn't even in there. Oh, yeah, I didn't have a bathroom. So we had to run out the back door about 30 yards. There was a bath house. Right. It had showers and bathrooms in it. Yeah, but we did... I had put in a little kitchen area. Just a little sink and a little work area, work table area. We hung a curtain for our bedroom. And we had a couch and a tiny little table. And so it was very cute and comfy. And it was nice. It was cozy. It was cozy, yep. Yeah, we lived in there for two years. Yeah, we lived there. Yep, and we had... We planted some flowers out front. We made it look really nice. Yeah, I was... I made it... I tried to make it really nice. I wanted to have a nice place when I moved in there with Priscilla. So we moved in there on a Saturday afternoon. And then we stayed there for the weekend. We went to church the next day on Sunday. And then we stayed there until Monday. And then Monday morning we packed everything. And then we took off on our honeymoon. Yeah, that was so fun. We just took off. And remember, we had just started driving a few months ago. So it was just... It was just freedom. It was lots of fun. Right. And so where did we go from? So we drove 11,000 miles on our honeymoon. We got a park pass. And we drove... We hit as many parks as we could. We went through Oregon, down the coast. Through Yosemite and through Death Valley. And our car overheated in Death Valley. Thought we were stranded. And all over. Then we drove down to Texas. Took a one-day, one-week cruise. Yeah, a seven-day cruise. Yep, that was awesome. That was our first experience on a cruise. And we drove all the way to North Carolina. And I worked on a house in North Carolina for a week. We stayed at a little cabin there. And then we drove home, zigzag back and forth. And put a total of 11,000 miles on our car. And it was great. It was a good time. Yeah. Got to know each other a lot better. Discovered that we still had issues we had to work through. Yeah. It was good. So there it is in a nutshell. Just a couple notes that we had made. Yeah, and if you have not... If you are new here and you have not watched our Growing Up Amish and How We Met videos. That would be good to watch too. Gives a little bit more of a backdrop of who we are, I guess. And next time, do you think we'll talk about... Our first few years of marriage, possibly. Yeah, our first few years of marriage. And maybe our twins. Oh yes, our twins. That was a surprise. Yes, and then we may even later talk about some things like marriage tips or things that we've learned from each other. We might. Some things like that. Raising kids or whatever it might be. Give us... Yeah, give us suggestions. Yeah, give us suggestions what you guys want to talk about. What you would like us to hear from us or our perspective. We don't have the answers, all the answers, but we just... From our experience, we'll be happy to share with you what we've learned. So there's still a lot to learn. That's for sure. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this. The reason we didn't do this outside, it was a little cool. This is April 15th today, but it actually snowed last Saturday. Was it last Saturday? Yeah. Yeah, like two inches on Saturday. But the daffodils are blooming. It's springtime and the winter's on its last hurrah. Yep. Awesome. Thanks for watching, guys. We'll catch you next time. Thanks for commenting and subscribing. Yeah, don't forget to subscribe. There we go. Thanks.