Kristi Yeager knew she was probably going to spend the rest of her life with Paul Buescher just six months after meeting him. Why, then, did they wait nearly eight years to marry? Did he have commitment issues? Was she too focused on her career?
Nope. They had to grow up first.
Meet: They met through Buescher’s sister, who attended dance school with Yeager in Brighton. Buescher and Yeager were 16 years old and attended different high schools – she Weld Central, he Brighton.
“I had never seen him before, but he’d always gone to our recitals and stuff,” Yeager says. “So, he kind of knew what I looked like, and he had told (his sister) that he thought I was cute, or whatever. I wasn’t seeing anyone, so we kind of started talking through his sister.”
He eventually dropped the tell-her-hi strategy and started calling her house. The conversations went well, lasted hours. Early dates consisted of watching movies at her parent’s house.
Match: Things just clicked, according to Yeager, but the relationship didn’t have light-speed acceleration. She loved his stability and trustworthiness. He appreciated her ebullient personality, which balanced his more reserved one. “She’s always smiling, happy-go-lucky,” he says. “It makes me feel better.”
Their relationship even survived college – apart. They never broke up. She went to the University of Northern Colorado. He went to Colorado State University. Thanks to his job in Greeley, later in his college career, the relationship never really had that long-distance feel to it.
Marry: Marriage first came up in earnest in their sophomore year of college, but Buescher waited until Christmas 2004 to propose. He hid the ring in her stocking.
“After dating that long,” Buescher adds, “I’m sure they (their parents)were thinking it was coming. It wasn’t a really big decision. I knew it was going to happen. I don’t know why I waited so long, truthfully.”
More than 300 guests packed St. Augustine Church in Brighton on Dec. 31 for the wedding, which included a 33-member wedding party and was followed by a reception at The Chateau at Fox Meadows in Broomfield.
No Colorado-casual affair, even the bridesmaids’ gowns featured small bustles, short trains and fur shrug shawls. The Rev. Reinhold Weissbeck acknowledged the tradition of having a good time on New Year’s Eve. “But that’s not what’s important,” he said, adding: “Love is not a desire. Love is a decision.”
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