Posted on May 16, 2014 by Alysia Boynton-Fisher
I am not a romantic. In fact, I am quite the opposite. Growing up, I never wanted to be a princess. I wanted to be a detective and solve crimes or an attorney so I could argue with people and make them pay for their wrongdoings. I didn’t want to wear dresses and ribbons in my hair, much to my mother’s dismay. I wanted to be one of the boys. I could run as fast, kick as far, and climb as high. I just couldn’t pee outside as easily!! For us girls, it gets tricky. I have never been a girly girl. It wasn’t until college that I finally learned how to apply make-up. I didn’t daydream about the kinds of things lots of girls do, like engagements, giant weddings, big white princess dresses, until everything changed, and then I did!!!!
During college I worked at a golf course in San Diego as a beverage cart girl. I could make a mean bloody mary! I worked there for several years. After receiving my degree in public relations and marketing, I was offered a big girl job at that very golf course and became the Director of Marketing and Weddings. I learned the in’s and out’s of wedding planning, wedding etiquette, and spent countless hours planning and setting up weddings. I helped brides envision and create their perfect day that they had been dreaming about all their lives and it was easy because we had a big blank canvas to work with, a big beautiful white tent.
Over the years while working at this golf course, I became very fond of a certain pro-shop boy. We were friends from the start, never more, until I realized he was exactly what I was looking for. The kind of boy you want to be with forever. It all started with harmless flirting, a look here, a smile there, and then a dinner invitation. Things blossomed. However, he was born and raised in Northern Michigan and was ready to return home. After just a few fun months together, with tears in my eyes and a heavy heart, I had to say goodbye.
Let’s just say that distance makes the heart grow fonder. After two weeks of him being home, we decided that we just had to be together. I can’t speak for him, but after thinking I had lost him forever, I knew that I never wanted to let him go. We would see each other for a week and then go three months without and it was hard, so hard!!! I found myself working weddings late at night, watching the bride in her beautiful white dress, dance her first dance with the boy of her dreams, under the twinkle lights, and all of a sudden I wanted that too.
We decided that I was going to move to Traverse City. Before this born and raised San Diego girl was going to move anywhere, I had to check it out. During our long distance adventures, I had never made it to Northern Michigan. I had met him in St. Louis and he had come to me, but I never had been to see where he grew up. It’s probably a good thing too. If I would have visited for the first time in the winter, I would have turned around and caught the next plane right out of this frozen tundra. I arrived in July and was in awe of this place that I had never even heard of. I was in love with the boy and what was to be my new home. It was while I was here, that the boy asked me to spend forever with him and of course I said YES. Nothing made more sense to me than to get married at that same golf course where we met, where it all started, where I spent wedding after wedding, dreaming of me and this boy, dancing the night away, wearing a big white princess dress, in a big beautiful white tent.
It was everything I had never dreamed of! We celebrated with over three hundred of our loved ones and everything was perfect. The food was delicious, the drinks were flowing, and we all danced the night away. It was the kind of wedding where we were begging for just one more song and then just one more song after that. The kind of wedding where you get back to your hotel and you could just pass out in your clothes, but we all know that the boy wasn’t going to let that happen!!!
Obviously, it wouldn’t be practical to get married in the tent I was married in, way out in San Diego, but you can get married in a tent just as beautiful at Crystal Lake Golf Club. It can be your blank canvas. It can be anything and everything you have ever or never dreamed of. The beginning of your story and it can begin the same as mine, Once upon a time in a tent…
