SECURE THE FUTURE: AFTER VALLEY

Mark: I immediately started working at my dad’s restaurant and attending school. I did NAU’s program out of Scottsdale Community College for hotel and restaurant management so I could also work full time. I ended up opening the restaurant’s 3rd location and taking over all of catering for all 3 locations. After working in this industry for 10 years I switched to working at Crescent Crown Distributing. I am now currently the National Sales Key Account Manager.

Shannon: Right out of high school I knocked out all my prerequisite classes at MCC. During the 3rd year when I started on my degree’s classes I convinced my dad (who was paying for everything) to let me start an LLC. I knew right away that I wanted to have a wedding planning company so for a little bit I did both. Truth be told I have never been a “school” person, but was definitely there for everything social. As I started doing real weddings, it made even more sense for me to focus on gaining the experience rather than do the book stuff in class. The amount of support I received from past VALLEY alumni was overwhelming, and played a huge part in the success of my company early on. Being hired to do so many of alumni weddings gave me the opportunity to have more experience than the average 21 year old who was just starting. Now 16 years later I can confidently say we are one of the top 3 wedding planners in the state of Arizona. We now have a team, and can accommodate up to 3 separate weddings/events in a day. 

Mark and I always ran in the same friend circle, but really didn’t start hanging out one on one til our senior year. Our senior year we ended up in a lot of the same classes, and we became really good friends. We started dating on our Senior class trip, and have been together ever since! This April we will be married for 16 years.

Our life is probably a little fast paced for some, but we would not have it any other way for the time being. We have 3 kids, Trey (12.5), Boston (11), and Lola (8). They are all extremely active in their activities, which requires an extremely coordinated calendar since we both work full time. The nice thing about at least one of us having their own company is for the most part one of us can always be with them or shuttling them places. Our weekends are spent on a football field for the most part or at a wedding for Shannon depending on the season. We currently go to The Grove church. Our kids have been in Christian school since kindergarten, and we have loved watching them grow up with some of the same people we grew up with.

It is kind of neat that we have a lot of the same memories from high school. We had a lot of the same friends so when we do see them it is pretty fun to look back on.

For Shannon – Mr. Timmer will always be a special one since he actually was her soccer coach in 6-8th grade, and her 8th grade teacher. Of course everyone LOVED Mrs. Mehan so she makes both our lists.

For Mark –  Mr. Short, he was always helping Mark not get in to trouble.

We knew early on we wanted the kids to go to Christian school just because we both looked back on how amazing it was, and how even though you don’t think its formatting your heart and who you are as a person–it is. It also gave us some of the best opportunities that you don’t just get anywhere, and we want that for our own kids.

Enjoy every minute because as cliche as it sounds–“it goes by so fast”! High School still holds some of our most favorite memories.