It’s March 20th, 2010, the first day of Spring Break and a man is waiting nervously at the altar of Memorial Presbyterian Church. The man gazes into the eyes of the woman he longs to spend the rest of his life with standing at the doorway. Amidst all the guest standing to their feet, to him she’s the only one in the room. The man is consumed with emotion, the man awaits his bride Sarah Hande, the man is Tim Holley.
Sarah and Tim met while volunteering for K-Life, an outreach organization for high school students in Kirkwood. They both traveled to Florida for a K-Life trip, where they began hanging out and soon began dating after returning back home.
“There’s a lot of overlap in our lives because we are both heavily involved with high schoolers,” said Holley.
Because Sarah is a youth leader at a church, she is often at Westminster attending games and other Westminster events. Thus, the couple sees a lot of each other.
“Some students have met and gotten to know Sarah and they are really excited about us getting married,” said Holley.
Holley has received nothing but positive responses about his upcoming nuptials.
“I’ve gotten some funny and quite interesting advice from some of the male students in the school,” said Holley.
Holley’s proposal seems to come right out of the pages of a romance novel. On Sarah’s birthday, Holley had one of his friends pick her up and drive her to Forrest Park. In the car his friend gives Sarah a present. The present was a five-card list of 139 reasons why he loved her. That previous Valentine’s Day they had been dating for 139 days. Unbeknownst to Sarah, Holley was waiting at the World’s Fair Pavilion for an hour waiting for her to arrive. While he was waiting, pedestrians constantly asked him what he was waiting for. After telling them about his surprise proposal, many of them were fascinated and decided to wait with him to watch the proposal. Once Sarah arrived, she saw him and others waiting at the top of the stairs. Then he popped the question.
“I had to ask her about three times because she was in such shock and kept asking me if I was serious,” said Holley.
At the top of the stairs Holley had a table set up with candles and flowers where they had a candle light dinner. The dinner consisted of all Sarah’s favorite foods. After leaving the dinner, they headed back to Holley’s house where he had a surprised party planned for Sarah with forty of their closest friends and family.
Holley doesn’t think that his marriage will have any drastic changes on him as a teacher. However, he does expect for the rest of his life to change for the better and he anxiously looks forward to the new and unfamiliar experiences that marriage will bring.
“It’s exciting because I get to marry the person I’m in love with and my best friend,” said Holley.