Our wishes for you, Kelsey and Brian, are years of love and companionship.
I hope that you will impact the lives of people through your professions, even though you
have different professions, you both will touch people in many profound ways and to continue
to allow God to guide everything you do.
Mark Twain said, to get the full value of joy, you must have someone to divide it with.
And we wish you happiness and blessings as you start your shared lives.
So, to Kelsey and Brian.
We wish you happiness and blessings as you start your shared lives.
We wish you happiness and blessings as you start your shared lives.
We wish you happiness and blessings as you start your shared lives.
We wish you happiness and blessings as you start your shared lives.
We wish you happiness and blessings as you start your shared lives.
We wish you happiness and blessings as you start your shared lives.
We wish you happiness and blessings as you start your shared lives.
We wish you happiness and blessings as you start your shared lives.
How are you doing?
Who gives this woman to be married to this man?
Her mother and I are father.
Thank you.
All right.
You may be seated.
You may be seated.
Thank you.
We are gathered here today to witness and celebrate the joining of Kelsey and Brian in marriage.
With love and commitment, they have decided to live their lives together as husband and wife.
This is a scripture reading from Philippians 4, 4 through 9.
Rejoice in the Lord always.
I will say it again, rejoice.
The gentleness be evident to all.
The Lord is near.
Do not be anxious about anything but in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving.
Present your trust to God.
And the peace of God will transcend all understanding.
Will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable.
If anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.
Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put them into practice.
And the God of peace will be with you.
Very good.
What is great about Christianity is that the message is clear and simple.
God lets us know who we are as individuals and how we can be reconciled to Him.
All of us have messed up in life through what we say, maybe what you do or what you think.
The Bible calls this sin, and sin is what renders us helpless to do something on our own to please God.
We can't do it.
We can't reconcile ourselves to Him.
But God steps in.
That's the great thing.
God steps in.
In Romans chapter 5, Paul's the writer, and he says this,
God demonstrates, and that's in the present tense in the original language, which means he keeps on doing this.
God demonstrates his love for all of us.
While we're in our mess, Christ died for us.
So Jesus, the God-man, took our sin upon himself, he suffered and died, and he was resurrected so that we could be united with God.
That's the gift.
And that's what truly love is.
In the New Testament, there are four words for love, four different types of love.
The one that I just talked about in Romans and elsewhere is the word agape, and that is the highest and purest form of love.
God offers that love, and we can either accept it or reject it.
By accepting it, you make a commitment to Him.
In marriage, it's the same agape love that binds a man and woman together in a marital relationship,
and they are committed to one another and to God.
This type of love, and you've noticed you hear this, but this is agape love.
It is patient.
It is kind.
It does not envy.
It does not boast.
It is not proud.
It's not rude.
It is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered.
It keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
And then love always protects, it always trusts, it always hopes, it always perseveres, and love never fails.
Why?
Because God never fails.
So this is the charge to both of you.
You each have a personal relationship with Christ, and you have made that commitment to Him.
In your marriage, take this same relationship and commitment and become one to honor Him with your lives.
Remember, you've got to agape each other.
All right?
Kelsey and Ryan have written their own vows, and they will exchange them at this time.
You can take it.
Kelsey, from the first moment that I saw you, I knew you were something special.
You are brilliant and funny and absolutely beautiful and so compassionate and loving towards others.
And I am just so incredibly in love with you.
So I will always be honest, kind, patient, faithful, and forgiving with you.
I promise to be a true and loyal friend to you.
I will be your ally in conflict, your greatest fan, your toughest adversary, and I will always communicate with you openly and fully.
For you, I will be a sanctuary of warmth and peace, and I promise to encourage and support you.
I will be yours and plenty and in want, in sickness and in health, in failure and in triumph.
I will dream with you, celebrate with you, and walk beside you through whatever our lives may bring.
Most of all, I promise to pursue God first and foremost in my life.
In this, I will always provide for you and protect you and lead you and love you as Christ loved the Church.
Ryan, William Stout, you're my absolute best friend.
I love you so much, and I'm so thankful for the godly man that you are, for your loyalty, for your honesty, for your compassion, for your leadership, for your sense of humor.
I just can't believe that I get to marry you today. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.
I promise that I will always be honest, kind, patient, faithful, and forgiving with you.
I promise to be a true and loyal friend to you.
I will be your ally in conflict, your greatest fan, your toughest adversary, and I will always communicate with you open and fully.
For you, I will be a sanctuary of warmth and peace, and I promise to encourage and support you.
I will be yours and plenty and in want, in sickness and in health, in failure and in triumph.
I will dream with you, celebrate with you, and walk beside you through whatever our lives may bring.
Most of all, I promise to pursue God first and foremost in my life.
In this, I will follow your leadership, respect you, honor you, and have unending grace with you.
I love you so much, Ryan.
Put this back on. Good luck. Thank you.
We're just taking a lull. Thank you.
All right. Kelsey, do you take Ryan to be your lawfully wedded husband?
I do.
Ryan, do you take Kelsey to be your lawfully wedded wife?
I do.
I do. Thank you.
Since Ryan and Kelsey have vowed to love one another, will the people out here make a commitment to them?
And if so, would you please say we will collectively at the end of each of these vows that I'm going to read?
All right. Number one, will you surround this couple in love, offering them the joys of your friendship?
Thank you.
Will you offer them the strength of your wisest counsel and the comfort of your thoughtful concern during times of conflict?
Finally, will you celebrate with them and nourish their love for one another?
Love.
Thank you.
Kelsey and Ryan will now exchange rings as a representation of their love for one another.
Very good.
Finally, Kelsey and Ryan would like to share communion with their parents.
Mark and Karlin and Bob and Debbie, if you would come forward, please.
We're going to pray.
This is truly a moment of joy.
This is a moment of blessing.
God, take these two and unite them as one, for truly life has just begun.
Amen.
Ryan and Kelsey, I now pronounce you husband and wife.
Ryan, you may now kiss your bride.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, guys, I'm a little far away because the mics don't work that far, but if you can
please bow your heads with me.
Oh, Father God, let's just take a moment and consider where we are.
Thank you so much for a beautiful day.
Thank you so much for a beautiful wedding.
Thank you so much for just a beautiful couple and for the blessing of them being together
and joining themselves today in a covenant that reflects your love for us.
Lord, I just ask that our attitude tonight would be one of insane gratitude.
Please bless this food to our bodies.
We ask that our conversation would be glorifying to you.
We pray that your blessing would be upon Ryan and Kelsey now and throughout the rest of their marriage.
Lord, we love them so much.
Thank you for this evening.
In your name we pray.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Hey, everybody.
Hey, before I get started, are you guys having a good time?
What an amazing night.
I just want to take a minute before we say anything else to say, you know, it takes a lot of work and effort and time
to put on an awesome party like this.
So can you just give it up for everyone who's helped out with flowers and decorations and so many different things?
But the most important people there is the party doesn't happen unless it has a host.
So the two most important people I'd like to thank are Mr. and Mrs. Ruhman for putting on such an awesome party.
Join with me.
All right, Ryan and Kelsey, turn to me.
I feel like I'm going to marry you again.
So my name is David or Zambo, if any of you have caught, there's a lot of fraternity men here, so we all have multiple names.
And I met Sparks 10 years ago at Alpha Gamma Omega up at CU Boulder.
And, you know, over the years, I've been blessed to have many, many great friends.
It's one of the things I treasure most in life, but Sparks has been one of the absolute best of all those.
And you've been more than a friend to me, you've been a brother.
So it's my honor to be able to make this toast for you.
And what I want to do, Kelsey, is talk to you a little bit about Sparks.
Sparks, this is fraternity name, by the way, Ryan.
I never call him Ryan.
You've known Sparks for a number of years now and gotten to know him, but I've known him for a long time and I know what an amazing man this is.
So I want to tell you a little bit about the kind of man you're marrying and the kind of things that he's going to bring to a marriage.
And I think there's three things.
The first thing is Sparks is a guy who loves adventure.
We've been on a ton of adventures together and done many, many crazy things.
I wrote down a short list of some of my favorites, things we've done over the years.
We've played Frisbee Golf dozens and dozens of times on CU's campus.
Once we started at midnight and didn't end until dawn, we've gone caving together in Boulder to search for endangered bat species, which we found.
We tried a camping trip once in Aspen and looked all weekend.
Couldn't find a camping spot, so we ended up camping in the South's backyard and ordered a pizza for dinner.
We once skied a double black diamond run in Aspen called Possible, but it turned out to not be possible for me.
After you skied to the bottom, I proceeded to yard sale my way down the entire thing.
We've illegally trespassed and explored the underground tunnel network beneath CU.
Spent a whole night doing that.
We went on a trip to a shooting range one time, which ended up with you taking a trip to the emergency room.
Not because it was shot, but kind of close. You can ask me later.
We've engaged in multiple bets with other people, with the stakes being that the loser has to pee their pants on the spot.
Again, you can ask me later. True story. Neither of us have ever lost that bet.
We've climbed many 14ers together, something I like to do, and one time on Pike's Peak,
my final 14er, Sparks got altitude sickness, so he got picked up on the road by a pair of senior citizens
and driven the final thousand feet to the top.
We've taken multiple 24-hour road trips out to California where we packed 14 college guys
into a 15-passenger van, driven 24 hours, played flag football on the beach for two days,
turned right around and come home.
Those were always rough trips.
We've had bring-your-own-TV video game nights, and then probably the one adventure we haven't had,
but I've always wanted to do with you, is you've never taken me up on my offer to...
I've always just wanted to see what would happen if you eat just like one nut.
Just one nut. How bad could it be?
You married a medical professional. I don't know.
But we've had a lot of great adventures together, so that's something you can really look forward to, Kelsey.
But the second thing that's always marked Sparks as a man is his character.
When we were in college, we both had a mentor who really instilled in us the value of
not just the kinds of things you were doing in college or what you're going to do after in college,
but the character of yourself.
And that means things like your integrity and who you are on the inside, who you are when no one's watching,
what really matters to you.
And Sparks, you, as much as anyone I've ever known, are a man of character,
and you're a man who pursues that.
I can think of countless ways. You've always been the first guy to help us move.
We moved dozens of times. I've seen you be extremely generous with your time and money to all kinds of different things.
Throughout our friendship, you've always been the first guy I can call it 2 a.m. when something's happening
or something's not going right in life, and vice versa.
And one of the things I love about you and your character is it's not just who you are now,
but you have a desire to care about who you are becoming.
And you've always cared about the man that you're turning into.
And that's absolutely one of your best traits.
But the third and probably most important thing about you as a man that I respect is that all those things are anchored in Jesus.
As much time as Sparks and I have spent being complete idiots together out on adventures,
my favorite memories with you have been for a series of years we went to the same church together,
and every Saturday night it was myself, Sparks, and my wife, Katie.
We would just stay after the service and we would just think and we would process
and we would talk about what we learned and what we learned about God, what we learned about Jesus.
And that says everything about you.
When I first met you, you were a very different person than you are now.
Like Chuck talked about at the wedding ceremony, you have a history, you have a past, we all do.
But as I look back on the 10 years I've known you, I'm amazed at the ways that you've matured
and the ways that you've allowed Jesus to change you and to grow you and to turn you into the man that you are today.
So Kelsey, what makes me so excited about you guys being together is I think you bring out all the best of those things in Sparks.
And it's been amazing to see and I hope that all those things mark your marriage just as they've marked our friendship.
So if you'll raise your glasses with me, I'd like to make a toast to Ryan and Kelsey.
To a marriage marked by joyful adventures, a genuine pursuit of character and a relentless love for Jesus.
And now Kelsey is made of honor and Ryan's sister, Rachel, will give her toast.
Hi everyone, I also want to thank you all for coming out today to celebrate beautiful Kelsey and Ryan.
And I do want to give a special thank you to the Romans for putting on such a great party.
So for those of you who don't know me, I'm Ryan's little sister, Rachel.
And as little sisters tend to do, we tend to learn a lot from our big brothers.
And I just want to share some of those lessons with you today.
Ryan taught me how to do a backflip on the trampoline.
He taught me how to get my feet under me, my very first time figure skating at the Aspen Ice Garden.
And he also taught me how to laugh.
And I'd like to share a quick story with you guys today about a time Ryan and I have done some laughing over.
So a few years back, Ryan invited me to go to the AGO Holiday Gift Exchange.
And when I arrived to the fraternity house, I noticed my present was the exact same size and shape as his.
And we exchanged a little look and then we just kind of put it to the side and didn't really think much about it.
And a little while later, actually, Ed's younger brother, Peter, who's here with us today,
he picked my gift unwrap and it was a camouflage snuggie.
And then moments later, Ed's here chose Ryan's present, which was also a camouflage snuggie.
And so I never thought Ryan would meet anyone just as goofy as the two of us.
Until Kelsey here, she came with us to our family vacation to Disney last summer.
And in true stout fashion, me and my brother and my mom, and of course my father,
we like to make the most ridiculous faces on all the rides at the cameras.
And Kelsey here, she made some faces that I've never seen any human being make before in my life.
And she just trumped us all. We'd been doing this for years.
And it was at that moment that I knew she was a stout through and through,
which brings me to my final lesson, is my brother taught me how to marry right and how to marry well.
And Kelsey is the most selfless person I've ever met.
She gives way more than she takes and she's the most genuine listener I think maybe any of us have ever met.
She loves those around her so much, but somehow still has dedicated her life and her career to healing and helping strangers.
And I just can't wait to learn my first lesson from my big sister.
And so I just want to raise my glass and say cheers to many more lessons and to the lovely newlyweds.
I love you both so much.
And now the mother of the bride Debbie would like to share a few words with you all as well.
Hi everyone, I'm Debbie Ruhman and I'm really speaking on behalf of Bob and myself,
and we just couldn't let this evening pass without expressing to you our extreme gratitude
for being here with us and sharing this most amazing day with Kelsey and Ryan.
And for many of you, you traveled such an incredible distance.
I know some of you are pretty local, but many of you came from Missouri and from Florida and from California.
And I just can't really tell you each individually, and I hope I have the opportunity to talk with you all individually before you leave,
but I really can't express to you enough how much that means to you.
I'm so deeply grateful for the effort that you made to get here and to spend time with us.
And we couldn't be happier for the beautiful relationship that we are able to witness with Kelsey and Ryan
that from the very, very beginning has just felt meant to be.
We feel blessed to be growing, gaining a son-in-law as well as many new friends and a stout family.
Ryan's character and traits represent everything we have ever dreamt for our daughter, whom we adore beyond words.
Our wishes for you, Kelsey and Ryan, are years of love and companionship,
like Bob and I and Carlin and Mark have experienced, like Mark talked about last night,
and the blessing of children, I've made no secret of my desire for grandchildren,
preferably sooner rather than later.
I hope that you will impact the lives of people through your professions,
even though you have different professions, you both will touch people in many profound ways,
and to continue to allow God to guide everything you do.
Mark Twain said, to get the full value of joy, you must have someone to divide it with,
and we wish you happiness and blessings as you start your shared lives.
So, to Kelsey and Ryan.
And with that folks, our bride and groom would now like to share a few words with you all, and thank you for coming.
So, we're just going to be really quick, we're just incredibly honored, like I can't describe how humbled I feel right now,
just looking out at some of you who I have just met today, and some of you who I've known for years my whole life,
and I am just incredibly, incredibly touched, I can't describe it, it's truly indescribable.
Every, like we were just talking about it, when we're sitting at dinner, being able to look and see all of our friends and family,
sitting at one big table, enjoying a meal together, is literally just a dream come true,
and so we just thank you for the hours and hours of effort to get here,
but more importantly, the hours and days and years that you've invested in our lives, we are truly, truly grateful.
So, to you guys.
We got stars outside, just you and I.
I got this feeling, rising through the ceiling, singing, darling, you got me feeling alright.
Let me show you, I was made to hold you, so lose your shoes and dance with me, dance with me, dance with me tonight.
Let me show you, I was made to hold you, so lose your shoes and dance with me tonight.
We can just forget the deadlines, leave them in the nine to five, let's not waste a night like this, let's hold on tight.
We got stars outside, and it feels just right. I got this feeling, rising through the ceiling, singing, darling, you got me feeling alright.
Let me show you, I was made to hold you, so lose your shoes and dance with me, dance with me, dance with me tonight.
My heart beats fast when we're moving slow, just one touch is beyond our control. Whatever you do, baby, don't let go, just don't let go.
I got this feeling, rising through the ceiling, singing, darling, you got me feeling alright.
Let me show you, I was made to hold you, so lose your shoes and dance with me, dance with me tonight.
I got this feeling, rising through the ceiling, singing, darling, you got me feeling alright. Let me show you, I was made to hold you, so lose your shoes and dance with me, dance with me tonight.
Dance with me tonight, dance with me tonight.
Never gave in, shoulder to shoulder we will fight, fight, fight fight fight, let's not see it!
