machinesxe Posted April 17, 2011 Share Posted April 17, 2011 So below is a contest my wife has entered to try and win a chance at having a dream wedding (We never had a chance to get one, we did a justice of the piece.). I come to you guys around here because this group is a loyal group of friends who have always helped out and taken care of one another. Thank you for you help for spreading the word. Read below. Please vote and also post on your facebook and twitters to help us win this. I believe you can vote once a day so help us win this! Thank you everyone. Below is the official story my wife wrote to Disney. Thanks! Our LOVE story! As a little girl and throughout my life I had two dreams; one was to fall in love and marry the man of my dreams, the other was to have children with him and be a mother. That was my wish for our "happily ever after". My name is Karen, and I married my best friend; my soul mate – Travis. Our love story began very simply. I was seventeen, in my senior year of high school when I met my husband. Travis began working at a grocery store that I worked at. We started off just as friends, but our relationship quickly grew into something much more... something I felt was truly amazing. We fell in love fast, just like I imagined I would when I met the person I was destined to be with for the rest of my life. We spent all our time together, we were inseparable. We spent our days dreaming about our future, growing old together, and about our future children. A year after graduating high school, Travis and I found out we were going to be parents. Along with being completely taken by surprise...we were also scared. Not because it was not supposed to happen but because our plan was just unfolding much sooner than we had expected and not in the order we had imagined it would. At the young age of 18, Travis asked me to marry him. We planned on a little wedding before our baby boy would be born. We couldn’t afford the type of wedding we wanted. So we did a very small justice of the peace wedding in our little town. Sadly we didn’t even have our grandparents in attendance. We had our parents, our bothers and our sisters-we didn’t and couldn't invite our friends. We chose for it to be like this because in the future we wanted to have a real wedding; the one I had always dreamed of. Travis knew what it meant to me, and he wanted me to have that. We decided that our 5 year wedding anniversary would be the day we would renew our vowels and have our wedding with all our family and friends in attendance. Life has not gone at all according to plan. At the age of 22 our lives changed drastically. A few weeks after our son Zachary’s 3rd birthday, he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Hearing that news made our hearts stop pumping. Instantly we lost all feeling in our bodies and all we could do was let our emotions take us over. Now our little family was facing the biggest and hardest challenge of our lives and we had no choice but to "pull it together" and pull through. As our world began to feel like it was crashing down instantly around us, all Travis and I could do was cling to each other and be the strength and the comfort that we needed so badly to help us get through each day. Our goals, plans, and wants all changed. Our only goal, plan, and want was to have our son be a happy, healthy little boy. Zachary's road to recovery would be a long and hard struggle. I wouldn’t ever leave my son's side. We decided that it would be best that I stop working. After all, much of our time was spent in the hospital. Travis and I were young, terrified, and struggling. A wedding during our 5 year wedding anniversary was not going to happen. It was not feasible for us when we hit our 5 year mark and it definitely wasn’t a priority in our lives. Zachary’s treatment would continue for 3 and ½ years. We wanted him better. Nothing else mattered. Fast forward 5 years. Travis and I are now 27 years old. Our prayers were answered- Zachary is almost 8. He is 1 year removed from treatment and doing amazing. We went on to have two other children, his sister Hailey who is now almost 3 and we just recently had our 3rd child, Chase. While supporting our family and allowing me to be a stay at home mom, Travis went to school full time to earn his Associates Degree in computer science. Travis is currently working towards his Bachelor’s Degree. With our growing family and us getting older, we can’t afford a wedding. We can’t have it be a priority in our lives. Looking back on our 8 years of marriage I am amazed at the things we have over come and gone through together. We fell in love, got married, had a family and throughout it all we have always cherished our love for one another. Our struggles in our life is not what makes our story- it's the love that we have found and clung to throughout our struggles that defines our "happily ever after". Our love has gotten us this far and helped us overcome so many obstacles. My dreams have come true, and I know we are truly blessed. We took a hard road, but we’ve endured all the obstacles together. I would love to renew our vows in front of all our family and friends and celebrate how far we have come. To celebrate our love, and the life we have made. Many people have doubted we could make it, statistics were against us, but here we are stronger than ever... I always imagined my wedding day and how amazing it would be. Although I have everything I ever wanted in life, I still long for that fairy tale wedding that we never had. Please vote for us to have the chance to renew our vows! And please ask your friends and family to vote for us!! Voting could help make our dream come true. Feel free to forward this on and share our story and our link with people so they have the chance to vote. Thank you, Karen Fitzgerald PS. You can vote once a day!!! Here is the link: http://family.go.com/happily-ever-after-contest/stories-category/1a---t-k----for-all-time--71092/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hellboy2 Posted April 17, 2011 Share Posted April 17, 2011 done, hope you win this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moon_lit_tears Posted April 17, 2011 Share Posted April 17, 2011 Done! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
machinesxe Posted April 18, 2011 Author Share Posted April 18, 2011 Thank you everyone! Remember you can help even more by spreading the word and voting once a day! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Huntman Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 Voted. Gonna get some friends to vote for you as well. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
machinesxe Posted April 19, 2011 Author Share Posted April 19, 2011 Thanks Hunt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TakerNGN74 Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 Just stoping in to say that I voted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
machinesxe Posted April 20, 2011 Author Share Posted April 20, 2011 Thanks everyone very much! Please keep it up you can vote once a day! We are in 109th place right now but gaining on the others rapidly. Please help us keep going! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
machinesxe Posted April 21, 2011 Author Share Posted April 21, 2011 Here is a site my wife put together with the full write up about us. Please guys we are in 99th place right now and my goal is to be in the top 10. If we can get there I think we can be a contender against the other when Disney reviews the top voted applicants. http://tk-foralltime.webs.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joehelmer Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 I have now voted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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