Here are some pictures from the wedding:
As most everyone knows, Brittany and Reese started dating in middle school. Their story is a great one. This is what Brittany and Reese wrote to re-cap their story in anticipation of the wedding.
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7 Years & Counting...
Middle & High School
While we were in the 8th grade I had health class 6th period and Reese was an office aide to have a free period. The first time I remember seeing Reese he came into my health class to deliver a note to the teacher. We were watching “SuperSize Me” as a class and I was reading Twilight at my desk. All of my friends who knew him were saying hi and I remember thinking “I’ve never seen someone so happy”. Thankfully, Reese switched into our class after Christmas break and we were in Coach Walker’s Speech class together. He sat at the desk next to mine and I instantly had the biggest crush.
March 26, 2010, Reese skipped class to go watch Baylor Basketball play in the Sweet Sixteen of March Madness. I used this opportunity to get his number and text him asking him why he wasn’t in class. From then on we were together all the time. We were teammates for board games during free period (sorry @ all of our friends for cheating/winning every time we played “Sorry”) and sat together during Church every week. We “talked” and flirted - whatever that means for 14 year olds - for 4 months and on July 26, 2010, we officially started dating.
All throughout high school Reese & I were very much a duo. Half the time I would meet people they would say “Right! You’re Reese’s girlfriend.” Reese was an absolute all-star in high school (if you don’t believe me, check the Dallas Morning News: http://shawnhelms.blogspot.com/2013/10/dallas-morning-news-story-about-reese.html?m=1).
Basically, he was way out of my league. He was class president all four years, played varsity football, was valedictorian, and was heavily involved in our Church through small groups, volunteering, and mission trips. Y’all see why it was easy to be so into him, right?!
The two most important parts of our relationship from high school were our friend group and our involvement at Lake Pointe Church. We had an amazing group of friends throughout high school, guys and girls, who hung out together all the time. This made our relationship way easier because we never had to pick between hanging out with each other or our friends. Pretty regularly, Reese & I would go get dinner or Sonic drinks and then go play sand volleyball or other games with our friends and that would be our date night. Church was the other place we spent a lot of our time. We were both in small groups there, volunteered with the middle school ministry, went to camps, and went on mission trips to the Rio Grade Valley. Even as high schoolers, I knew that Reese loved The Lord by how and what he spoke about, how well he loved his friends, and how he spent his time. But, it was on these trips to the Rio Grande that I got to see him serve The Lord in a very tangible manner, and really see his heart for both serving and furthering the good news of Jesus Christ. The Lord used the Rio Grande in immense ways in my own development and faith, but needless to say I also fell harder for Reese on each one of these trips as well.
College
When it came time to go to college, we didn’t want to follow each other but we wanted to be fairly close to each other. But, as always, The Lord had different and better plans for each of us. Reese decided to go to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, and I chose Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. We were sad to be going places about 7 hours apart but both confident in our decisions. We thought after being together for 4.5 years that long distance would be no problem for us… Boy were we wrong. Reese immediately got plugged into Christian community at Vandy and involved in the Navigators. He found brothers and sisters in Christ who were likeminded in their values, as well as solid guys who challenged him and held him accountable. I was having a very very different experience. My freshmen year at Wake was really difficult for me. I didn’t know anyone at Wake before going, I had a really hard time finding community, and was 17 hours away from home. In addition to being long distance and having different experiences, we both realized that we were dependent on each other in a lot of ways instead of on The Lord. This was the final breaking point. So, after being ~extremely~ confident that long distance would be no problem for us, it took all of about a month before Reese & I broke up over FaceTime. It was the worst.
The Break Up
What was weird about breaking up was that we had been dating for so long and grew up together so we didn’t really know how to not be together. It took us a little bit to actually figure out how to be broken up. Eventually we realized that for us that meant no talking, no texting, unfollowing on social media, etc. We needed a clean break to become rooted at our new schools and to develop deep relationships with people. Looking back, we jokingly refer to this time as “the lost year”. We actually had no communication with each other, and no idea what was going on in the other person’s life. Here’s the kicker. The summer after freshmen year of college our Church from home hired Reese to be the high school summer intern, and I had reached out to the head of the youth women’s ministry to volunteer with her. Neither of us knew the other was planning on spending so much time at the Church. We avoided each other when possible and made awkward small talk when necessary, but towards the end of the summer we were asked to both go as leaders on a high school mission trip to the Rio Grande Valley. Not only could we not avoid each other, we had to work together to plan and lead the kiddos (who were only a couple of years younger than us). That week while we were both serving and leading, we were both reminded how great the other person was. But, the trip ended and the summer was over. We both went back to school with full confidence that yes, the other person was great, but we didn’t want to get back together and wanted to have a fresh start to a new year of school.
Sophomore year started and lots of things changed from freshmen year. But we’ll get to that in a second… In October, Grace Anne (s/o girly, love you) and I went to Nashville for a weekend to see a Ben Rector concert//have a girls weekend. We went to the concert at The Ryman on Friday night and as Ben was thanking everyone for coming to the show the house lights turned on. I turned around to leave the auditorium, and of course, there was Reese and his group of friends about 10 rows behind us. Neither of us said anything to each other; it was super awkward. The next day Grace Anne and I went about our plans and explored the city together. It was the perfect day (we still “celebrate” October tenth each year because of this day, it’s always 10/10! hahaha okay sorry back to the story). Saturday night Reese and I texted about how it was weird neither of us said anything, and that we should get coffee before I had to head back to Wake. So early the next morning, before Reese was driving some freshmen to Church (hey Parker!!), we met and actually sat down just the two of us to catch up. It was wonderful and strange. It was so easy and fun for us to talk, but it was also weird because even though we’d only been broken up for a year, so much had changed for both of us. Since we had broken up I had found roots in a campus ministry, sweet friendships, joined a sorority and was on the executive team for that, and had completely changed my course of studies. Reese had walked on to the Vanderbilt football team to play receiver (Anchor Down baby), had made rich friendships through the Navigators and BYX (his fraternity), and because of the time he was dedicating to football he decided to drop one of his majors so he only had 2 instead of 3….such an underachiever.
Getting Back Together
After coffee Reese and I walked out to our cars and went about our days. I remember driving back to Wake with Grace and thinking, that was great but so dumb. Yes, of course Reese was still amazing and was doing incredible things in college but now I’m going back to North Carolina and all that came from this was a reminder of how awesome my ex-boyfriend was… But then in literally the last 20 minutes of the 7 hour drive I got a phone call from a very excited but also kind of nervous Reese. He said something along the lines of “I have no idea what this means, or where it would go, but what I do know is that I loved talking to you this morning and have been thinking about it all day. So, I’d love if we could start talking again, maybe weekly phone calls or something to just see how that goes.” GUYS, I almost had to pull over the car because my heart was beating so fast. I was scared and excited but overall I was just really happy. No part of that day felt real.
Over the next few months, we took it day by day. We called each other about once a week and slowly started to get to know the other’s daily life, classes, and friends. This time was bumpy. There were days where it felt like this was going to work and it was going to be awesome, and there were other days where it felt ridiculous and that it was going to end terribly. Neither of us told our families or friends from home because we knew all the pressure that would come from that. We were still just trying to figure out if this was anything serious or not. One week during our talk, I told Reese I didn’t think it was a good idea for us to keep talking because I didn’t want to become emotionally attached again and I definitely didn’t want to be just friends. This was a turning point and thankfully Reese fought for us. We didn’t see each other in person for the rest of that semester, in fact we only facetimed once so I literally had no idea that football player Reese had decided to grow his hair out into a “flow” (ew). But that Christmas break, about 3 months later on December 26th (note the unintentional but reoccurring theme of the 26th), Reese asked me to be his girlfriend again and things just kept falling into place.
Dating
I went to Vanderbilt early the following spring semester and got to spend time with some of Reese’s friends and see his world. For me, this is when the relationship actually started to feel real. Someone asked what it was like getting back together and Reese responded by explaining that even though we were disconnected from each other for a while we had relatively similar experiences at our schools - we both got plugged into community, had life giving friendships, and had found our place on our campuses. But, we missed each other. So once we had all these other things figured out, the thing we both still wanted was to be together. My heart was bursting.
Weeks went by, and about a month later Reese came out to Wake for the first time. He got to meet a bunch of my people and come to a date function with me (and deal with me as I was mega stressed since I was the social chair at the time). But by far the most memorable part of this trip was when we went and eno’d on Davis field. We spent that time talking about what the rest of the semester would look like, how we were feeling about long distance, and our fears about this relationship progressing because it certainly wasn’t just casual dating. It was a heavy conversation. I got a text to come meet my friends in Subway so I started getting ready to leave and Reese grabbed my hand and said “hey, I know we’ve only been back together for a couple of months and it’s scary jumping back into long distance. But, I want you to know I’m all in and I love you.” WHAT. I had no idea what to say. I literally just stared at him in shock for so long that eventually he had to say “I’m not expecting you to feel the same way yet, but I wanted you to know where I’m at with this”. We talked through what that meant and the weight behind telling another person you love them and how scary that was for me. As we finished that conversation and were packing up our stuff I grabbed Reese’s hand and said “I love you too”. Reese smiled so big and grabbed me in the tightest hug and said “we’re totally going to get married”……..SOOO then we had to have another conversation about emotional boundaries because that was a lot for me. Really sweet. But a lot since I had just finished processing him telling me he loves me.
The next couple of years were filled with visits to each other’s schools, becoming friends with each other’s people, and growing more confident with each day that The Lord really was leading us to marriage. The difference in our relationship after getting back together was that during our time apart we both learned the difference between receiving salvation and surrendering our lives to Christ. This completely changed the dynamics of every part of our lives, but especially how we dated.
We talked a lot about how we didn’t want to jump ahead in our relationship and why emotional boundaries (as well as physical and spiritual boundaries) were so important to us – we didn’t want to miss out on being present in the phase of dating. Dating is so fun and had such a specific purpose for the phase of life we were in since we were still 7 hours apart and at different schools. But, at the end of Christmas break our junior year, Reese took me out to eat and said point blank, “I know we don’t normally talk about this, but I want to marry you someday and so I want to know what you think about getting married out of college?” You see, Reese and I were both trying to decide where we would be the summer between junior and senior year and if we wanted to get married young then we wanted to be in the same city so we could see what it would be like to live in the same state as each other. We talked about how we were (and still are) very done with long distance dating. We also talked about how after we graduate we would want to be in the same city and how by then we will have dated for a few years (lol) so it made sense to get married if we were going to be in the same place but in a new phase of life with post grad anyway - all of this was me logically trying to justify getting married so young, but in actuality we both just really wanted to. The next day I left to come back to Wake, but what I didn’t know was that the following morning Reese met my dad for breakfast (which is pretty common because they have a bromance…sometimes I’m definitely the third wheel with them). Before they left that meal Reese told my dad that it wouldn’t be for a while but that he wanted to ask his blessing to propose to me so he could start saving up for the engagement ring. I learned all of this later, but my dad was thrilled. He told Reese that he never thought he would be excited about the man I would marry because no one would be good enough (my dad thinks way too highly of me) but that Reese has felt like a part of our family for a long time now and he would be thrilled for us to get married. *still crying imagining this conversation*
The following summer Reese and I were both in Dallas. He was working at Capital One and I was taking classes. It was so fun being a short distance couple!! We got to see each other almost every day and do real life things together like homework, laundry, and watching the Bachelorette on Monday nights! It’s funny because none of those things are special but they are things we never got to do together so they were all so much more fun than they should have been. As summer was coming to an end I was more certain than ever that we would get married. What I didn’t know was that getting engaged was a lot sooner than I expected. Reese took me on an elaborate date on a Friday afternoon where after walking around Klyde Warren Park downtown we had dinner in reunion tower and recapped our summer and feelings about how the summer had gone. It was absolutely an adjustment not being long distance, and we argued a bunch over stuff that didn’t matter, but that it had been so much fun. The next day I was getting dinner with Hannah, Macy and Madi who were all finishing up camp and classes for the summer. Macy picked some fancy vegan place downtown so we all had to get dressed up and ride together downtown. As we were driving there we “got lost” and ended up driving past this scenic overlook of downtown’s skyline. Macy said "guys, we’re already late and it’s almost sunset so let’s just get out and take a cute pic since it’s the end of summer!" ...I was super annoyed and starving, but she was right, do it for the insta. So we got out and started walking when I saw a sign that said “Brittany” with an arrow pointing where to walk.
Engagement
The arrow was pointing to a table set up in the distance and while I was trying to figure out what it was I saw Reese start walking out from behind the bridge. Should I have known what was happening right then? Yes. Was I in shock and not fully processing things? Yes. Reese ran up, gave me a huge hug and said “Brittany, I love you. You’re my favorite person and my best friend. Your heart for Christ and His kingdom and the way you care for others makes me fall more in love with you each day. Loving you means choosing you in the good and the bad and I know that I want to choose you every day from here on out. So, *gets down on one knee* Brittany Lynn Helms, will you marry me?” I said yes, and we spent the next minute freaking out and being so excited but then as I was hugging him he threw a fist in the air and yelled “She said yes!!!” I turned around and saw that he had invited both of our families and our friends from high school and college – an actual mob of people were running towards us. The next few minutes were filled with hugs and congratulations. Then Reese’s dad gathered everyone in a circle and prayed over us and the promise we had just made to each other. As Reese and I drove back to my house I just kept saying “we’re actually going to get married, like, in real life. This is crazy.” Then when we walked into my house the surprises just kept coming. There were so many people in my house with food and decorations everywhere. Reese had worked with my family to set up the most fun engagement party with so many of our favorite people. Everything about that day was a complete surprise to me and everything about it was perfect. Reese and my family know me so well.
Senior year of college has been crazy. We’ve been planning a wedding long distance from each other while also being long distance from our families and where the wedding is at. We have both been trying to figure out what we’re going to do after we graduate and where we’re going to live. All while we’ve both been trying to still be present in our senior year of undergrad with our classes and friends. It’s been a lot to manage and while it’s certainly been difficult, it’s been a really sweet time where we’ve had to be dependent on The Lord and seek support from each other and our family/friends. With about 3 months to go until the wedding, we couldn’t be more pumped for marriage – we definitely don’t have it all figured out but we are committed to loving one another and excited for the future.
MAY 26th WHERE YOU AT?!?!
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