By Sally Friedman Correspondent
It began with a casual fix-up back in July 2005: a friend in Virginia invited Heidi Schneider, who was then new to the area, to go out one night with a friend of her boyfriend. Yes, a blind date.
Heidi, the bride, said yes when that friend offered a rave review on the blind date candidate. It was encouraging.
“When I saw him, I remember thinking that he was the most handsome man I’d ever met,” said Heidi. “For me, it was instant infatuation.”
For Preston Pierce, then serving in the Army, there was a similar reaction. Talking to Heidi was easy and fun, he recalled. The two began spending time together, and those times became more and meaningful. Time for both was a precious commodity, and their schedules collided. Preston’s active duty military life meant early mornings, and Heidi’s job as a car saleswoman meant a lot of working nights.
Nonetheless, a romance bloomed over the months, and Heidi learned she was pregnant at the very time that Preston was being processed to a base in upstate New York.
“At first, we decided that I would go to New York with him, but after a few months there, I didn’t like the area, and I came home to Browns Mills,” she said.
The long absences from Preston, now working in Indiana, took their toll, and both realized that they had grown apart. It was at that juncture in 2007 that Heidi made a life-changing decision: impressed with the opportunities of military life, she decided to join the Air Force Reserve.
And that might have been that.
But about a year and a half later, during Preston’s visit to see his son, Heidi realized that she was still in love with him. “Seeing him again made me realize that my feelings for him were still very real.”
For his part, Preston saw that he, too, was feeling a rekindling of the love that had first brought them together.
“We had a lot to work out,” said Preston, “but it felt right. What finally brought us back together was that we were communicating the way people who love each other have to.”
Ultimately, he moved back to New Jersey in June, 2009, and a new chapter of commitment and togetherness began in the home they created in Pemberton Township.
But not without its own challenges. The couple took over custody of Heidi’s two nephews full time and another nephew part time, meaning that they became a household with three boys, and sometimes four. It was complicated, and certainly exhausting.
“But it also helped to bring us together as a couple and taught us how to be a better team. And with active little boys, you need to be a team,” said Heidi. She is still with the Air Force, currently as an Emergency Management Specialist with the 54th Air Mobility Wing at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, and Preston is a security officer at Pemberton Township High School.
Then last summer, during a family trip to Disney World, there was magic when Preston, now 35, proposed to his own princess in front of Princess Castle.
That proposal came to fruition on May 25 at The Madison in Riverside, before an assemblage of close friends and family.
A high point for both bride and groom came when Heidi’s sister offered the couple their favorite prayer:
“Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things ...”
And undeniably, both will cherish the vows they wrote and recited to one another.
“I will love you when we are together and when we are apart; when our lives are at peace and when they are in turmoil ... I will honor your goals and dreams and help you to fulfill them.”
Source:
http://www.burlingtoncountytimes.com/life-...
Posted By: How May I Help You NC
Wednesday, July 23rd 2014 at 10:24AM
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