Miami Quarterly

Issue date: 4/13/09 Section: Feature

• Click here to download the PDF of this article as it appeared in print.
  

There will be bouquets of pale pink and yellow roses and bridesmaids in sage green dresses. There will be guests lining the walls of the Oxford Bible Fellowship when Miami University senior Lisa Dunn walks down the aisle, where Buck Wilson, a Miami fi fth year, will be waiting in July.

 Dunn met fiancé Wilson in October 2005 at Navigators, a campus ministry group. When they realized they didn't want to be apart, marriage had a nice ring to it and they got engaged in August of 2008.

As a match made in Miami-Merger heaven, Dunn and Wilson will be among more than 13,000 RedHawks to tie the knot.

 Dunn says Wilson loves to mess with people, especially her, so when he told her the earliest he would propose was last summer, she was expecting a ring before her senior year. But as the summer dragged on and there was still no ring, Dunn came to the tearful presumption that Wilson would propose to her on their three-year anniversary in October during their annual walk around Tappan Hall where they started dating.

When they conveniently ran out of time to shop for engagement rings in August, Wilson took his unsuspecting bride-to-be to get her nails done and to a French restaurant to enjoy a night out before school started.

"I was giving him a hard time, asking him what I was supposed to tell my sister when I came home from the night without a ring because she was giving me these looks when she saw that my nails were done," Dunn says. "All the while, Buck was playing with a ring in his pocket."

When Wilson took Dunn on their walk around Tappan that night in August, she was impatient. She remembers walking around the MET Quad with clenched teeth, being "cold and unresponsive" thinking she'd have to leave a perfect night without being proposed to. Then came shaking and blurry eyes and a question.

"Are you messing with me?" she asked.

He wasn't.

"I don't remember hardly anything he says to me on this walk, but I do remember him at this moment saying, "I'm not asking you to date me and I'm not playing with a name tag (something he was twiddling with throughout the first walk), but I do have this ring and I'm asking you to marry me," Dunn says. Dunn blurted, "Where did you get that!" and Wilson had to repeat himself before she finally nodded an answer.

Swept up in the excitement, Dunn says she forgot to just enjoy being engaged. "The moment he proposed, I went home and made a zillion phone calls and all of the sudden, we had to start planning everything right away," she says. "I would recommend just taking time to chill and then get started afterwards."

Balancing books and bouquet choices may be a daunting task, but Wilson says getting engaged as students shaped their outlook on life.

"We grew up a little bit in the sense that we have to be responsible for each other," Wilson says. "We can't go out on a Friday night and get drunk. We're moving forward and investing in the future. It's a really different mentality."

Project Matrimony

For Dunn, the planning process has been a fun project where they've learned about communicating and teamwork.

"We learn new communication skills through working on this together," she says. "It's funny because we learned so many random things about each other."

For example, the "pretty stuff " is Dunn's department. So are flowers and colors. Wedding night, honeymoon, organization-what he calls "grunt work"-is Wilson's department.

Wilson says he has opinions on random things, like big cereal bowls, small spoons and waffle makers.

"I want the bubbles in the mascara tubes that look like test tubes instead of the regular ones," Wilson, a chemistry major, says. "Other than that, I'm happy with whatever she picks."

Keeping (holy) order

From organization binders from Navigator friends to weekends of dress shopping with her roommate, Dunn says sharing the wedding planning experience with others has been a big help.

 "My friends help me remember that it's only one day and the rest of my life is after that, too," Dunn says. "It's been very fun and needed because I wouldn't know what to do without them. Last semester was terrible for me with the stress and learning how to manage and balance things."

However, wedding planning hasn't exactly been a piece of cake. Wilson didn't expect the complete indecision that came with every decision.

"Every decision didn't want an answer, it just wanted to be talked out a few days or weeks," Wilson says. "It was a little surprising because I'm very decisive and Lisa likes to sit on things and think it out."

Different tastes

[Click to enlarge]

People pleasing is just as hard in reality as it is in the movies, Wilson says.

"Her mom doesn't want to spend a lot of money," Wilson says, "but her dad wants to make it a unique event that everyone is going to remember because she's their first daughter."

Everything is countered with a price, which Dunn says can be limiting, but force creativity.

"My friend told me that you either pay for it in money or in time," she says. "I've been spending a lot of time looking for things online for a cheaper price."

 If Wilson had his way, he would "sacrifice a nice wedding for a nice honeymoon."

However, since the honeymoon fund is from their pockets and not their parents, the newlyweds will be in Gatlinburg admiring the Smoky Mountains, white water rafting and hiking. "There is no one else around except us and we get to enjoy each other in the middle of God's beautiful creation," Wilson says.

Everything’s changing

"There's a ton of life changes going to be happening all at the same time," Dunn says. "We're going to be graduating, getting married, moving and starting a new job all in the matter of 3 months."

For Wilson, it's the post-wedding necessities-"we don't have couches or a bed yet"-that supplied the reality check. However, Dunn says they're OK with having "crappy stuff for a while."

"We'd rather be married and not have every material thing we want than have all the material things and wait five years to be married," she says.

Sailing together

Wilson says their Navigators experience united them with the same mentality and belief.

"It has put God as the focus of our relationship," Wilson says. "We have the same vision for our life, It's freeing to know that you're on the same path and we're not just wandering."

Dunn says they depend on God, not solely on each other.

 "I'm not depending on him to fulfill all my needs and he [isn't] either," Dunn says. "It's good to know that I can be a complete failure and he wouldn't just crumble because I screwed up."

 In August, Dunn and Wilson will be full-time staff for the Navigators at Kent State University, where they hope to stay for a few years.

 "We know where we're going and it's something we can do together, which is fun as newlyweds," Dunn says.

Ultimately, Dunn realized their wedding will take up only one day on the calendar.

"We're preparing for a lifetime, not just one day," she says. "That's helped guide us a lot."

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools