- It all came down to,
first off,
it being about us.
- Yeah.
- Not about people that's coming.
It's like, thank God for being here.
- Right.
- But this is about us because,
when things get hard in marriage,
it's gonna be us.
(Jade laughs)
- Hey, y'all what's up?
I'm Jade Godbolt.
- I'm Mark Godbolt.
- And we are
the Godbolts.
And this is, "Millennial Love Stories."
♪ Keep on doing that ♪
♪ You gon' see yeah ♪
♪ See, yeah ♪
♪ 'Cuz I only want you ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
- So we met in March
or February? 2016.
(mellow music)
I was working for Nike at the time
and trying to build an influencer market
here in Dallas, Texas.
So one of my friends that I grew up with,
well, kind of grew up with,
worked with in the past,
texted me from like,
a whole 'nother state, like,
"Hey man, check out this woman.
Like, she's from Dallas,
I see her on Instagram.
So see if she'd be interested in joining the team."
So I'm like,
"Okay. Sure."
So, there you go.
- So when he first reached out,
I initially was like
(brakes squealing)
"Sir, don't come in my DMs trying to meet up.
Like, what is this?"
But the only thing that I was like,
okay, this is legit,
is because he had a @nike.com email.
So I was like, "Okay, it's official."
Like, you're really doing this for real.
You ain't just trying to like, get at me.
- Yeah, so she reached back out,
we met up at NorthPark Mall.
- In Dallas.
- North Dallas.
And,
I was like,
yeah, there's something special about her.
Kept it business.
- Mmm hmm.
- But there's something special about her.
And we met up,
like, a few days later,
I got some product for her,
met her up,
met up with her at a-
- Like a little, like, diner-
- Like cafe vibe?
- Like, lunch little situation.
- I gave her the product
within the first 10 minutes of sitting down
and literally,
we ended up talking for like, three hours.
- Yeah. It was a long time.
- And at that point, it was like,
yeah, like, there's something special about her.
- Yeah.
- There's something different about her.
- Yeah.
- Like she speaks to me in a different way.
- Yeah.
- So, I've never met anyone,
any woman, especially,
like her.
So I was like,
yeah, let's see where this goes.
- Yeah.
(Mark laughs)
And we initially got engaged.
I was, what?
Five or six months pregnant with our daughter, Sarai.
- [Mark] At least that, yeah, yeah.
- And so, we had this beautiful dream
of having a destination wedding in Mexico,
which we started to plan, essentially.
We were planning to get married in June, 2020.
And so-
- [Mark] Come on, pause for a minute.
- [Jade] What?
- [Mark] First off, we got engaged.
When I say, like
(Mark chuckles)
the next week,
she already had like,
a wedding plan ready.
Like, this is when we're getting married,
this is where we're getting married,
destination,
so I'm thinking in my head, I'm like,
I mean, we just got engaged.
Like, you're not gonna let it get cool or nothing.
- No.
- Like, it's still hot off the press.
- Yes.
- And she already had plans.
- Yes.
- And, we're in Oregon as well, at this time.
- Yeah.
- Really, like, by ourselves.
All of our family are in Texas or like, New York.
- Yes.
- So we're on the West Coast-
- Yes.
- Northwest, by ourselves.
So we're thinking,
okay, we can't get married out here
because that would mean-
- People would have to come to Oregon.
- Everybody would have to come to Oregon,
which was a whole different thing.
- Yeah.
- So that's the reason why we even wanted
to do a destination wedding in the first place.
- And, we both have huge families.
- [Mark] Massive, massive.
- So, we were like,
okay, we want everyone who's supposed to be there,
to be there.
And having a destination wedding requires,
you know, a passport,
requires a few other things.
So we figured-
- You gotta actually do something.
- Yeah.
- You can't just pull up.
- Right.
- Like, you gotta actually plan this.
- So we were like, you know,
if we do a destination wedding,
then we know that,
the right amount of people are gonna be there,
it'll still be a large group,
but I think we had about 60-ish of our family members
that had already RSVP'd
and paid money down and everything by the time-
- That was shocking, too.
- Which was,
because we were thinking,
oh, destination wedding,
you know, maybe 30, 40 people will come.
- People, yeah.
(Mark laughs)
- No, it was like 60 plus at-
- In the first, like, two weeks that are like,
paid that down payment and everything.
(hands clap)
And we're like, okay.
- Listen, they were ready.
And so we were,
and of course we chose like,
an incredible resort.
And, me being me,
I was like,
ooh, management team,
let's reach out and see if we can do something,
if we can do a little marketing,
if we can do a little cross collaboration.
- Yeah, yeah.
- So, with the resort that we had chosen,
we actually also had negotiated
a collaboration with them.
So a lot of our wedding was actually going to be comped.
And then COVID hits.
And within,
six weeks?
- Yeah.
- We literally canceled our wedding.
- Well, we had to cancel because-
- We had to.
- We're thinking about like,
the families that have put money down-
- Yes.
- And we're like,
we don't know what's up ahead and like,
they could need those funds.
So that's-
- Right. And we didn't feel right having them-
- Like trying to keep dragging it out-
- Yeah.
- To see if like, maybe things will change-
- Right.
- By May.
- Yeah.
- Maybe things will change-
- Yeah.
- June 13th was the actual date.
- Yeah.
- And so,
we ended up canceling the wedding.
Literally the day after we made the decision to cancel,
they closed Mexico to the USA.
- So within a couple weeks,
we literally cancel our wedding,
decided-
- Bought a pod.
- Got a pod,
put a third of our things in the pod
and then, moved our entire family back to Dallas.
- [Mark] We drove 32 hours straight
from Portland, Oregon to Dallas Texas.
And, still didn't know-
- [Jade] If we were gonna get married-
- If we were gonna even have a wedding.
- If we were even gonna do a wedding or anything.
- Yeah.
- [Jade] We were just focused on,
okay, we need to get to a safe place.
We need to be with our family.
We don't know if they're gonna close the borders to Oregon
or close the borders to Texas.
We didn't know what was happening.
So it was a very scary time.
And we, at that point,
when we got back to Dallas,
'cause that's where we're both from,
we really didn't know
if we were gonna have a wedding or not.
- Two weeks we didn't have a place to stay.
So, our apartment wasn't gonna be ready for a while
and we ended up staying with my father-in-law.
And they have like, this massive house,
one story,
a lot of land,
like, a acre and a half of land or so.
- Yes.
- So we're like,
kind of pausing for a minute to like-
- Yeah.
- Catch our breath-
- Just breathe. Yeah.
- And like, get ready for whatever is next.
- Yeah.
- We're sitting in their backyard
and we're having a conversation.
And, I can't remember if you brought it up
or if I brought it up of just like,
why don't we have the wedding here?
We're about three weeks now from the actual, original date.
- And we reached out to a woman
that is an event planner in Dallas,
but we were like,
"Hey, have you ever done a wedding before?
Like a small, intimate wedding?"
- Yeah.
- Like, at that time,
Texas was only allowing 30 people max to come together.
- [Mark] So within three weeks,
she got her dress sized and fitted-
- [Jade] Yes.
- [Mark] That she bought in Oregon-
- Yes.
- Which is also like, what?
- Yes.
But the thing is,
we didn't even choose so many aspects of our wedding
because there literally was no time.
- Yeah.
- So Erica, our planner,
literally just like, took the
(Jade laughs)
just whatever we threw at her,
and she just made it happen,
like, to the smallest details,
to the colors,
to everything.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- [Jade] To the floral arrangements.
Like, we literally didn't choose anything, hardly.
But when it all came together,
it was as if we had chosen every specific little thing,
just for us.
- It was so God.
It was so God,
like, family stepped up,
family did the food
(Jade laughs)
family DJ'd-
- [Jade] Yes.
- [Mark] The cake person.
- [Jade] Our bartender.
- [Mark] The photographer and videographers were like-
- [Jade] Yes.
- Friends that just so happened to be-
- In town.
- Like, celebrity photographer and available.
- Yes, yes.
- That came to our rescue and-
- [Jade] Yes.
- [Mark- It was the best day of my life.
- [Jade] Yes.
- [Mark] Still.
- [Jade] Yes.
- [Mark] And, we thought that it was gonna be about
all the island and the beauty of that and all of that.
- [Jade] Right.
- [Mark] But it all came down to,
first off,
it being about us.
- [Jade] Yeah.
- Not about the people that's coming,
it's like, thank God for being here-
- Right.
- But this is about us because,
when things get hard in marriage,
it is gonna be us.
(Jade laughs)
- Okay.
- It ain't gonna be y'all-
- Okay.
- It's gonna be us.
That's what our faith continues to teach us.
Like, to your point,
we could have a plan.
Like the Bible says,
you can have your plans,
but it's God's plan that's gonna prevail.
So, like for us,
we could have gotten down on,
dang, like, we can't have it in Mexico.
We can't do all the things.
- Mexico. We can't have like, this vision.
We're gonna be, yes.
- I can't have this,
I was gonna have special shoes made by the shoe surgeon,
like, we had all of these grand plans that we wanted.
And really, for like,
boastful-
- Prideful.
- Prideful reasons at the root of it.
- Yes, yes, yes.
- And, we were in a position to submit our will to His-
- Yeah.
- And say,
"God, if you let us do this wedding,
because that's what it's really about,
then whatever you say, we'll do."
- God made everything else come together
in a way that we literally didn't even-
- We couldn't have.
- We couldn't have, we didn't even lift a finger.
- Like, we didn't, yeah.
- To do, like,
our family showed up,
the people that worked with us showed up
and were doing things that we didn't even-
- The weather.
- The weather was perfection.
- We were so shocked that in June, in Texas,
it wasn't like the heat beat-
- [Jade] Oppressive.
- [Mark] I had on a full suit-
- [Jade] Yeah.
- [Mark] Dress, everything.
But it was like, a nice breeze.
- Yes.
- It was perfect, like, it was-
- It was literally perfect and we-
- The sunset was beautiful.
- Yeah, yeah.
- [Mark] We jumped in the pool afterwards,
fully clothed,
dress and all,
we just jumped in the pool, like-
- [Jade] Yeah.
- [Mark] It was just,
when you really do trust God,
He checks off your boxes and then some.
- [Jade] And His.
Listen.
(Mark laughs)
He don't, listen.
His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.
- His way is higher than our ways, yeah.
- So if you can come up with this perfect,
beautiful day, all this stuff.
What do you think God would have planned for you?
- Yeah.
- If you can think that, like-
- Yeah.
- We are so creative, so intentional,
so all of these things,
but God is better than us at that.
- Still.
- He's the originator of creative.
- Still.
(upbeat music)
Yeah, some advice for making the right decisions
on your wedding day.
I would say the number one thing,
like, get in lockstep with each other.
- [Jade] Yeah.
- That was one of the things that like,
we had to legit sit down and talk to each other
about what's important to us.
When you do that,
you actually eliminate a lot of those social norms
that can like, creep into your thinking.
- What I will say is that,
because we focused on the things that really mattered,
which was, us,
our love,
our union,
and what God had planned for our marriage and our family,
that day was the best day of his life-
- Yeah.
- The best day of my life.
I felt zero stress that day.
- [Mark] Fact. Yeah.
- [Jade] God made sure that our family stepped up,
everyone stepped up to where,
I legitimately never felt rushed,
I never felt anxious,
I only felt peace
and joy and calm
and all those fruits of the Spirit
that I just knew
that God had ordained that day
to be everything that we desired and so much more.
So we actually enjoyed!
- Yeah.
- Our wedding.
- I'd add, too,
just remain focused
on what matters.
- [Jade] Yeah.
- [Mark] That's y'all are getting married.
- [Jade] Yep. Period.
- [Mark] That's it.
- [Jade] Yep.
- [Mark] Anything else after that,
consider that bonus.