It was a baseball game that brought Jodie Whitcomb and Josh Anthony together — though the first night they met was no home run.
In July 2011, Jodie, an associate scientist for a medical device research company, was hanging out at a bar with her brother after watching his amateur baseball team play. After being introduced to his teammate Josh, she decided to ask the quiet construction worker to dance. And to her surprise, he declined the invitation.
Luckily, that wasn't the end of things.
“He ended up calling and asking me out the next day,” Jodie, 26, recalled with a laugh.
Jodie fell for his goofy sense of humor and reserved nature, which perfectly balanced her more extroverted personality. After a 6-month courtship, they moved into an apartment in Minneapolis together.
It was a chilly Sunday — laundry day in their household — when Josh decided to pop the question in January 2012. While the couple was sitting around watching a movie, he asked Jodie to go check on the laundry.
“I got mad,” she said. “I told him to go check the laundry.”
He prodded her further, so she gave in and left the room. As she slipped out, he used those spare moments to place a box with a ring on the television set. But when Jodie returned, sunlight from a nearby window washed out the box. She couldn’t see a thing.
“He’s just looking at me,” Jodie said. “He goes, ‘Look at the TV, there’s a scratch.’”
Jodie still didn't spot anything unusual. Giving up, he grabbed the box, got down one knee and asked her to marry him.
The couple tied the knot in an outdoor ceremony on August 10, 2013. Though baseball, the sport that brought them together, ended up being their theme, it wasn’t always that way. Jodie originally envisioned a unique ceremony at a local beach club. But while talking it over with her parents, Jodie’s dad jokingly suggested Target Field. They fell for the idea at once.
“It was obviously Josh’s first choice,” she said. “We switched gears immediately.”
They arranged a summer ceremony at the stadium, home to the Minnesota Twins, with a reception afterward at the Profile Event Center in Minneapolis.
Planning wasn’t very stressful: the event center was a “one-stop shop” that took care of many of the details. It was simply up to Jodie and Josh to choose which color schemes, food selections and decorations they liked best.
“I hear people talking about how stressful planning their wedding is,” she said. “We didn’t have any of that.”
Of course, there were some details she had to decide on her own — and that’s where Pinterest proved helpful. They consulted the site for their “save-the-date” notices (tickets with their pictures) and invitations.
“I’m not creative in any sort of way,” Jodie confessed. “I don’t scrapbook and neither does Josh.”
That wasn’t at all apparent on August 31, when Josh and Jodie wed in front of around 100 family members and friends at Target Stadium. Though there was only one quick rehearsal just before the 4 p.m. ceremony, Jodie was composed walking down the aisle.
“It was kind of calming,” she said. “I was able to get all my nerves out during that. When it came to the actual ceremony, I thought, ‘I can’t believe I’m actually getting married.'”
After Jodie and Josh said “I do,” the newlywed couple stopped by a few local bars on their way to the event center for the reception. There they were able to hang out with friends before the party got started.
Jodie fondly remembers her favorite moments from the reception: The couple’s best man and maid of honor giving funny speeches, her family taking a shot together and relatives who don’t usually dance grooving the night away.
But there was one perfect moment that seemed slower than all the rest: Her first dance with Josh.
“It was a brief moment where we were alone together, even though we were in a room full of people,” she said. “It was a calming moment before the chaos of the reception.”
Over 200 people showed up for the event, during which guests dined on chicken in a cream sauce, sirloin steak, garlic mashed potatoes and an “amazing” pasta salad. Instead of a cake, they organized a s’mores bar where guests could roast their own marshmallows. They also served mousse cups in various flavors.
“Josh and I don’t like cake,” she said. “We’d been to so many weddings and everything seemed to be the same. We wanted something a little bit different.”
The revelers danced until 1 a.m., when it was time to pack up and head home. Jodie looks back on the day as a whirlwind of fun that seemed to be over as soon as it started.
“It all kind of blurs together,” she said. “You spend so much time planning it, and then it’s over in a heartbeat.”
Take a look at more beautiful photos from the big day:
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