“It was exactly what we hoped for,” he said.
Sarah and Ryan first met in 2014 at West Salem Foursquare
Church in their hometown of Salem.
Ryan had a nice smile and a cute butt, Sarah said with a laugh.
“That’s what I noticed as soon as I saw him across the room,” she
said.
They chatted over coffee after church and soon started dating.
Sarah said they fit together well right away. They immediately felt
comfortable with each other and they shared a faith, something
important to both of them.
On a trip to Ryan’s family cabin at Crystal Lake the following
year, Ryan asked Sarah to marry him.
“She’s a sweet person and very generous,” Ryan said. “She’s a
great mother.”
One of the reasons they had such a long engagement was
preparing for Jackson, the couple’s first child, who was born in 2018.
Sarah and Ryan wanted to buy a house for their growing family so
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they put money toward that instead of a wedding.
Then, Ryan opened a business, Dempsey’s Remodels.
They put a deposit down in January at the Stephanie Inn, just
before the world changed.
Sarah said she knew she wanted to have a small wedding from
the beginning, so while the pandemic made plans for a reception
touch-and-go and some attendees were on the fence, limiting
wedding guests didn’t make much of a difference.
“We didn’t have to reduce our guest list because it was always
going to be small,” Sarah said.
Still, things were in question until the weeks before the wedding,
because they didn’t know what kind of restrictions would be in
place.
The Stephanie Inn was responsive and great to work with, Sarah
said. The inn provided information for a private baker who made
Sarah and Ryan’s wedding cake.
The couple had only 10 people at their outdoor wedding, with a
reception following at the Wayfarer.
The bride and groom wore personalized wedding masks to their
reception and for photos on the beach. The couple decorated with
flowers from Mimi’s Flowers in Seaside.
The wedding turned out beautifully, despite all of its challenges,
Sarah said.
Ryan said something that took him by surprise at the wedding
was the abundance of bunnies.
As they got married on the beach, he spotted 13 or 14 rabbits
in the brush. It was a special detail for the wedding day, Ryan said.
Sarah said she later found out that rabbits are signs of fertility,
which is fitting since she became pregnant with the couple’s second
child just after the wedding.
The family loves to get up to Crystal Lake and stay in a cabin as
much as they can to play in the snow and be in nature. It’s been a
special retreat this year, the couple said, because they can vacation
but still be isolated away from others.
Our Coast Weddings 2021 • 13