I (Abby) have always seemed to have pretty good luck. From small things like getting A's on tests I didn't study for to bigger things like winning an iPad or a car, I just got lucky. But about two weeks before we got married we experienced a series of unfortunate events.

On Sunday, November 3rd Brett was walking me out to my car to say goodnight when we noticed a car speed away from his driveway, only to find that the passenger window of my car was broken into. To make things worse, I had left my purse in the car and it was gone. We quickly got my credit cards canceled and bank accounts frozen, but they were still able to use my card to buy gas. The police came and gathered information, but we didn't really hear much from them after that.

Here's a picture of the broken glass from my car window:

The next morning I was running around all day getting a new drivers license (I had to have ID to get our marriage license!), opening new bank accounts and I started to get sick. That yucky feeling when you can feel a cold coming on - the irritation in the back of your throat, headache kind of sick. It was frustrating but I knew a cold wasn't the worst thing in the world. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a terrible virus and I was in bed every night with a 103 degree fever for about a week. Keep in mind this is about 10 days away from the wedding - and with my parents being in Michigan and not flying in until a few days before, I was panicking a little bit.

One night as I was going to bed, I got a text from my bank saying my credit card was being declined at a hotel in Idaho. I was annoyed that those thieves were still trying to use my stuff, but I wasn't too worried about it because I knew it was canceled. Then I realized, "Hey- I know where they are!" I felt like I needed to do something about it, but part of me just really wanted to go to bed and just forget about the whole thing. But I really think I was prompted to follow through with it. I called the hotel in Boise telling them the situation and the girl at the front desk said, "Oh my gosh - I know who it is!" But for legal reasons, couldn't tell me really anything beyond that. So I called the Boise police and told them what was going on, but figured nothing would come of it. But sure enough, at about 2am an officer called me back and told me they had caught them! For brevity, I'll post the KSL link here instead of re-writing it all out, but it felt pretty good to know that these criminals were caught.

The next morning I was running on a high from all the happenings of the night before when I tried to buy something at IKEA for our new apartment, and my card kept getting declined! I was so frustrated because I knew I had several hundred dollars in there, so there shouldn't have been any problems. I got back into my car and checked my balance and I had a -$800 balance! I about fainted because I thought there was no way this could be fraudulent from my stolen cards because this was a new bank account I had opened up! Well, come to find out that after about 2 hours on the phone with the bank, they actually linked my old account to this new one, and the thieves managed to forge and cash a large check from my account. It was a mess! Here I am, days away from my wedding and I am completely broke. The bank verified that it was fraud and said they would credit the money back to my account, but it was going to take a week or so because they had to do an investigation.

At this point, I'm angry and frustrated and basically just exhausted. (I'm also still recovering from that virus). After work that day, I start to head up to Farmington to meet Brett to start moving our new furniture into our apartment, when BAM! I get rear-ended on my way to the freeway on-ramp. We both pull over and as I get out of my car, the other guy gets out of his car too and tells me to pull into the parking lot next to us. It was valid, seeing as we were on a busy street and I figured he pulled over so he wouldn't just speed away - but I was wrong. As soon as I pulled in he sped off. At this point I was crying (and screaming a little bit) but luckily I got his license plate number. I called the cops and gave them the plate numbers and got everything sorted out. At this point, I had three different police cases open in three different precincts - the Herriman Police, the Boise Police and the Midvale Police. Oh brother...

You'd think my bad luck would finish there, right? No quite. The night before the wedding Brett and I walked around downtown and ate dinner. I got back to my hotel and realized that I had left my wallet somewhere! We called around but no one said they had found it. I was so frustrated, but just had faith that everything would work out. The next morning Brett picked me up to head to the temple when a drunk driver pulled out behind us. The driver was swerving back and forth and eventually forced us off to the side of the road, but we were fine. At this point, Brett and I just kept saying to each other "We just have to get to the temple... we just have to get to the temple..." and we did. We had a beautiful wedding day and haven't had any bad luck since.

It's easy to see that I had some bad luck, but now looking back, it's even easier for me to see how incredibly blessed we were through everything. God was definitely looking over us - I overcame sickness, bank account problems were fixed and criminals were put away. But most importantly, I was married and sealed to my eternal companion and that makes me the luckiest girl in the world.

Sometimes, you get super lucky and you get to marry your best friend. I was this lucky. I think it's appropriate that the first post on our blog is about our beginning - from both of our perspectives. We will try to keep it short and sweet :)


Brett and I were in the same singles ward in 2010, but he was dating someone else so I just admired him from a distance. Luckily, in 2012 we were both working in the same office on campus at Utah State University. We were both dating people on and off during this time, so we were just good work friends. However, about two weeks before I graduated and moved away, Brett finally asked me out on a date! He took me to Panda Express because he knew it was my favorite restaurant. He knew how to woo me!

Our second date was fly fishing up Logan canyon and this is the date that Brett claims he fell in love with me. For me, it was our third date - hiking up Bell Canyon. It's safe to say that since then the two of us were pretty inseparable, even though we were living 100 miles apart.

We had been dating for about 2+ months when the idea of marriage came up. It was just a no-brainer for me. Of course I wanted to marry him! He was my best friend and I couldn't imagine not having him in my life. Brett felt the same way. So we started *secretly* planning our wedding. We didn't want to announce it until we officially had the ring which didn't come for another 2 really loooong months.


I was planning on going up to Logan on Wednesday night to go canoeing with Brett, but he called me Wednseday afternoon to cancel because he had to go into work late that night for a conference call with some Japanese partners. Or did he...? Nope. He was being sneaky and picking up the ring. So we planned the canoe trip for Thursday.

Thursday night I get up to Logan and we take the canoe out to Benson. It was sunset and we were totally alone - super romantic, right? We paddled around a little bit and Brett pulled out his fly rod to do some fishing. He tied his fly and threw a few casts, and then handed the pole back to me to reel it in. I said no initially because I was a little nervous. The canoe was really wobbly and I had finally found a comfortable place in the canoe and I was afraid that if I reached forward to grab the rod that I would tip it over. But he asked me again to please reel it in and he was so sweet about it, I just had to do it! As soon as I started reeling it in I realized "Oh my gosh... this is it!" and sure enough - there was a ring tied to the end of the line! (For the record...it was a fake ring. He pulled the real ring out of his pocket). He knelt down in the canoe, and proposed. It was perfect and I will never forget that night for as long as I live.



She was hot, so I married her.  Just kidding.

Years ago when I first returned home from my mission in Spain, I happened to move into Abby's ward.  A friend of mine pointed out that "there are some girls out there that are just genuinely kind and sweet... like that Abby girl." I thought to myself "you know, you're right.  That's what I want, something like Abby." At the time, I didn't realize that it WAS Abby that I wanted.

A year or so later, I walked into the Intellectual Property Services Office at USU for my first day of work. I walked in to see Abby at the receptionist desk. I recognized her and I thought "Hey, she's a cutie." As the months passed and we moved to a new office, we eventually got to work in the same room and had part time work schedules that overlapped. The more time I spent in that office, the more drawn to her I felt. I really just had to be around her and talk to her. The problem was, we were both dating other people at the time and I couldn't work up the moxie to make any kind of advance.

By the time she got a job offer and decided to move an hour and a half to the south, I thought it would be a good time to ask her on a date. What can I say, I've always been a bit of a procrastinator.  On our second date, we went fly fishing up logan canyon.  That's right, I'm talking about Abby, in waders, with the canyon breeze blowing through her hair.  I was finished.

After many more dates and a trip to disneyland, things had progressed to the point that we decided to get married.  It was the easiest and best decision I will ever make.  I had never met someone so kind, warm and thoughtful than Abigail Soderberg.
The Proposal:

Once the ring came in, I put together a plan for the proposal.  While my plan seemed a bit more magical in my head, it certainly could have gone much worse.  We took a canoe to Benson Marina in Cache Valley along with some fishing gear.  Abby was a little uncomfortable with the weird crawfish floating in the water, the rocking of the canoe and the fact that I put my hand in vomit (not ours) to get the canoe off the dock into the water.  Nevertheless, she agreed to get into the canoe to humor me.  We paddled out, ate a quick lunch and stopped to fish for a minute.  I reeled in my line and said I had to put something on the line that "would sink a little bit".  Discretely, I attached a dummy ring (not the real one, I'm not that dumb) to the end of the line and threw it out.  I turned around and asked Abby to reel it in ;)  I was surprised at how reluctant she was to do anything that would require movement of any kind in the canoe, so I had to be a little... insistent.  She finally took the rod and reeled it in to discover a ring on the end of the line.

I carefully turned around in the canoe and knelt down on one knee (harder than it looks).  We each had to lean forward as much as we could to get a little kiss in before we paddled back to the dock.  It was hard to feel the romance of the moment when we were 20 feet apart in the canoe, facing the same direction, but even so, it was one of the happiest, most memorable moments of my life.

Before the wedding we faced our fair share of challenges, but I can't think of anyone better to go through it with than Abby.  I couldn't be any more in love, and we are just over-the-moon happy to be married and sealed forever.