Teresa Dee Meyerhoeffer Christensen's Life History : The Proposal, Wedding and Honeymoon

Idaho Falls Temple November 24, 1978

My Wedding - November 24, 1978 - Roger "casually" proposed to me the same day he returned from his mission in early August 1978. My little brother Jason and I went to Salt Lake City with Roger’s family to meet him at the airport. It was a bit awkward. Roger was released over the phone by his Stake President from his service while still at the airport so he could stay a few days in Utah to vacation with his family and go to the Park City alpine slides etc. When we arrived at the hotel later that day, he asked me if I “still felt the same”. There he was, a glowing RM who took my breath away…of course I felt the same, plus some. After we returned to Twin Falls he officially proposed to me about 2 weeks later down at Twin Falls Park in the Snake River Canyon on a metal balcony over looking the falls. He had asked for my father’s permission previously during a long beating-around-the-bush visit with him in our basement. My dad asked if I knew anything about the request :-). We planned a Christmas break wedding, but my dad said Christmas was too busy and asked me to wait until spring to get to know Roger again since he had been away for three years including college and his mission. All I heard was “Christmas is a busy time” and we moved it up to Thanksgiving break.

We were married just three months after he returned from serving in the Louisiana Baton Rouge Mission. Roger, his mother Bonnie and I went to the Idaho Falls Temple the Saturday before our wedding, November 18th, to take out my endowments. Then at 7:00 A.M. on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, November 24th, 1978, Roger and I were sealed in the Idaho Falls Temple for time and all eternity. No one told me that getting married at 7:00 AM was weird even in the LDS Church! None of my immediate family could attend, but all drove up Thanksgiving night after our turkey dinner and all waited outside. My Harding grandparents and some of my Harding relatives were there. We were married on my Grandpa Benjamin Williams Harding's birthday. My grandma Helen was upset she couldn't come to my temple wedding and told me horror stories over the phone about what happened in the temple. Thank goodness she was wrong. My mother, who had sewn my wedding dress, but could not attend the ceremony in those days because her spouse was not a member, waited in the waiting room off the foyer and my dad, who said if he couldn’t go to his only daughter’s wedding he would not go to the reception, was outside the temple on the snowy temple grounds when I came out. That made me cry. We had the “wedding breakfast” at 8:30 AM in a hotel across the river following the early morning sealing. Then Roger and I drove back to Twin Falls in our own car for our reception that was later the same day.

There was a basketball tournament going on at the college that weekend, so we had the reception upstairs in the Student Union cafeteria between games from 4:00 to 6:00 PM. The food was catered by the culinary department at the college and was so delicious. Ham slices were wrapped around dill pickles and turkey wrapped around cream cheese as well as other side veggies, nuts and mints. Since we could not serve alcohol on campus (a tender mercy because that was a touchy subject for my father who wanted to serve alcohol to his friends and we did not want it at our reception), we had non-alcoholic champaign. Our cake was three-tiered layers on pillars surrounded by 6 heart-shaped cakes covered with daisies. My flowers were daisies and yellow roses. The wedding colors were yellow, white and a rusty brown, earth-toned colors were popular at the time. Roger’s two sisters Cheri and Lori were my bridesmaids along with my friends from jr. high and high school, Mary Ann Salisbury and Nancy Evans, Nancy even went to college with me. My brother Chris was Roger’s groomsmen and his brother Craig was his best man, of course our parents participated too. We were young, just 19 and 21, but it was a magical night.

Roger was not thrilled people kept coming well past the designated time for the event to end and wanted to leave anyway, but we appropriately waited until the guest arrivals slowed down and well-wishers began to disperse. We were both in college and had to be back in school on Monday, so did not have much time to get away. We took off with some of our reception food and stopped in Shoshone at a drive inn restaurant on the way for more, then headed up to Roger’s "Mommy Chris" or Grandmother Clayta Christensen’s trailer in Ketchum, Idaho near Sun Valley. We spent one night there in her mobile home with a roof that had water damage so the ceiling hung precariously low over our heads. I knew then I was marrying a practical-minded man. :-). I am not complaining, it has kept us out of debt and from living beyond our means and we have always had what we needed. We did go to breakfast and dinner at a nice resort restaurants in Ketchum. But Roger was ready to head back to our apartment in Twin Falls next to the Fire Station on 2nd Street, open our gifts and get settled in a day earlier than planned. He still regularly likes to end vacations early and head back home or to work 40 years later.