“We met in junior high. He sat in the front row in our history class. I thought he was too outspoken. He was the guy who would yell something ridiculous before an assembly, but he was so funny!”
“Eventually, we became friends. I gave him my phone number and he would call me and I would always miss it. I was either at dance or asleep. My mom and dad would always say, ‘Reed called again.’ I remember, at the time, that he had my phone number written on the bottom of his skateboard.”
“He never asked me out we were always just friends. I always said no to other people, I knew I wasn’t old enough. I wasn’t allowed to date until high school.”
“In high school, Reed and I went different ways. I had a boyfriend at the time, but I knew I liked him [Reed]. I didn’t want to tell him that I had a crush on him, but my friends encouraged me to and when I finally did, he said nonchalantly, ‘I’ll call you later.'”
“We went on our first date after senior year of school and we’ve been inseparable ever since…”
“I lost my mom in the fall of 2015 and it was an extremely difficult time in my life. I had a lot of questions. I didn’t know if Reed was going to propose or not. I didn’t know if I wanted to get married. I remember asking myself, how could I go through with a wedding without my mom?”
“But, I knew my mom loved Reed and she would’ve wanted me to marry him.”
“Reed is in the Navy and at the time, he was stationed somewhere in the Red Sea. He came home in December of 2015 and asked me to go to Park City with him, but I worked an early morning shift as a reporter for ABC 4 news, I had to be to work by 3:30 a.m. the next morning and I didn’t really feel like going, but he just kept pushing it.”
“I agreed to go and we went to dinner at a restaurant on Main Street. I didn’t think anything of it because we always went out to dinner…The next thing I knew, he was down on one knee…”
Felicia Martinez and Reed Ilijic are set to be married on October 14, 2017 at This is the Place Heritage Park — Garden Place. The Military has the couple in San Diego, but they are anxious to get back home, to Utah. Stay tuned.
Engagement images credit: Jeff Dillow Photography
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Written by: Ashley Baker
