Allyssa + Johnathan | Hotel Vandivort Wedding | Springfield Mo

8.7.19

Allyssa and Jonathan first met in the summer of 2003 while attending a debate camp in Kansas City. While they were both comfortable addressing large crowds, it ironically took them a week to say hello to each other, a few months to go on their first date, and 15 years for Jonathan to ask the most important question of his life.

To be fair, life threw a number of detours in their way.

They saw each other at debate tournaments during high school, both attended Drury University, and spent a semester together in Washington, D.C., but Allyssa and Jonathan were the classic case of being the right people at the wrong time.

After college they were taken in completely different directions, with Jonathan moving to St. Louis for a postgraduate degree, and Allyssa moving to Salem, Missouri to begin her career as a reporter. Then Jonathan relocated to Baltimore, Allyssa to Kansas City.

They were only ever in and out of each others’ lives for brief periods; a coffee here, a quick conversation there. Until 2016, when Allyssa’s move to St. Louis put them in the same city for the first time since 2009.

By the spring of 2017 they had finally become the right people at the right time, and began dating. This time they quickly became daily fixtures in each others lives, meeting friends and families, having adventures both grand and mundane, and by Easter of 2018 they were engaged.

Although some people might lament all the years they could have been together, Jonathan and Allyssa know those were the years it took for them to become the people they needed to be to make a successful life together. They just had a really long love story.

Allyssa and Johnathan said “I Do” on top of a beautiful waterfall in the hosta gardens at Nathanael Green Park in Springfield, Missouri. The theme for the wedding was a roaring 20’s Gatsby theme and Hotel Vandivort made a perfect reception backdrop with its historic detail! Hotel Vandivort’s reception ballroom was bathed in green light by Complete Weddings + Events up-lights and the tables were decorated with handmade centerpieces. Their wedding reception turned out incredible!