8 | Winter BridalJanuary 2016 ~ Oelwein Daily Register and Independence Bulletin Journal

Winter Bridal | 9January 2016 ~ Oelwein Daily Register and Independence Bulletin Journal

The right feelingStrong, Bryan to tie the knot May 7

It was a Facebook romance. She had had a “thing” for him since she was 15, but it wasn’t until she was 24 that their paths really crossed. Over the years, Courtney Strong and Doug Bryan moved in similar circles -- she was a sophomore in high school when they first met and he was 19, the friend of a friend. For the next nine years, their lives went in separate directions -- Courtney studied pho-tography at Hawkeye Community College, worked various jobs in town and moved to Marion shortly for a job at Rockwell. In the meantime, Doug had married, became a father and got divorced, all the while working as an equipment salesman for Mid Country Machinery in Waterloo. Then, the right time came, and their lives meshed. They reconnected, hitting the right chord. Courtney describes it as “having the right feeling.” It began with a simple click. Somewhat out of the blue Doug added Courtney to his Facebook group of friends. She was somewhat surprised since so much time had passed since they had last spoken when they ran into each other at a bar in their hometown of Oelwein. They bantered back and forth for a while -- after all they had a lot of shared experi-ences. Perhaps one of the toughest one was also the most character revealing. In 2005, Court-ney witnessed from afar how Doug’s family dealt with the loss of his oldest brother, Andy, who was killed on Easter Sunday in an airplane accident at the age of 28, along with his aunt and a cousin.

“I finally realized how close these guys were as a family, I had seen them working together, but this was a different connection,” she said of the mourning family. “I had a feeling that I really I could be there at some point. It was very strange.” On Aug. 11, 2010, a day Courtney clearly recalls, Doug asked her on a lunch date. At the time, she worked in Cedar Rapids, but he didn’t mind making the drive to get a bite together. Over lasagna at Biagi’s, Courtney jokingly told him that she had had a crush on him for 10 years. “He laughed and just smirked and his eyes got big and the only word he said was, ‘Re-ally?’” From there on, a relationship developed and eventually, Courtney moved in with

Doug. “I knew he was the one,” she said. “It was a feel-ing, totally different than anything else I had had be-fore. Everybody that met him, loved him.” What Courtney found especially appealing about Doug is that he knew what he was doing. “He has goals and aspirations and he is deter-mined to make it happen,” she said. “He wanted to open his heavy equipment busi-ness, he wants to go back and get back his pilot’s license.”

By ANELIA K. DIMITROVA

So far, Doug has delivered on the business goal. In October of 2011, he launched Bryan Heavy Equipment, an Oelwein-based business, which employs 10 staff members and ships equipment, including road graders, all over the world. For her part, Courtney started alongside with him running the logistics part of the business. In the meantime, she also started settling into a new family role, “adopting “ Doug’s three children, who at the time were 6, and the twin brothers were 3. “I told him, I’d treat them like they were my own,” she said of her maternal instinct. In December of 2014, the two were in Vegas and had dinner at Botero, the famous steak house. Earlier in the day, they had walked into Tiffany’s window shopping. Unsuspecting of Doug’s intentions, Courtney no-ticed that there was something peculiar about Doug that day.

“The only thing fishy was he wouldn’t let me hold his right hand,” she recalls. S h e had no expla-nation for his strange insis-tence that she walk on his left side. “ H e had the ring in his pock-et, no box, just the ring,

walking around Vegas,” she said. “He had picked out the design.” At the steakhouse, they ordered and she asked him to help her with her dress. He did, but he wouldn’t sit down. It made Courtney very nervous as this was rather unusual. “And then he reaches in his pocket and kneels down at the side of the table, shows me the ring and asks me to marry him.” Courtney was so taken aback that she had to ask him repeatedly if he was serious. “I asked him five times if he meant it and he had to ask five times if I would marry him,” she says. “I was laughing. That was our moment, we absorbed it, and when we were ready to leave, we called everyone.” The first thing that popped in her head was who was going to stand up with her on her special day. Courtney’s older sister Dani-elle, her younger sister Ashley, and her best friend Megan made the list right away. “I felt they were the most im-portant girls in my life,” she said. Later, she added a fourth bridesmaid, Leslie Yearous. “I felt she also had to be there,” she said. In February of 2015, Court-ney got her dress from Heart to Heart in North Liberty. “It’s the only one that I felt anything when I put it on,” she said. “It’s diamond white, strapless, with a corset back. A little headband bought by her mother, Dee, with rhinestone, and a medium-length veil, will finish off

the bride’s outfit. The wedding will be on May 7 at the Zion Luther-an Church. About 250 guests are expected to attend. A honeymoon is in the planning stages. “I’m not really overwhelmed,” she says, “but when things start coming together, it’s actually starting to sink in. We always say we wish we had been together earlier, but we don’t know how it would have ended up. It feels right 100 percent.”

Courtney Strong and Doug Bryan pose together in preparation for their big day

Courtney, Doug, Michael, Alex, and Eric pose before hopping on a plane to the Dells

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Top: Doug and Courtney pose with their dog Shelby. Left: Courtney, Eric, Alex, and Michael at Yellowstone Park. Right: Courney and Doug in front of Doug's work truck