By: Leighanne Jordan
Preston Winner ‘popped’ the question to fiancé, Darien Denney, on Oct 17, 2022. Photo courtesy of Preston Winner.
For three Bellarmine seniors —Meredith Heisler, Jayme Scott and Preston Winner — their final spring semesters will include graduation caps and wedding gowns.
Meredith Heisler’s wedding is only a few months away, and she has scoured the stores for the perfect wedding dress.
“I have been looking at wedding dresses since I was a little girl, but actually finding ‘the dress' was a challenge… I wanted a traditional but classic ballgown dress, and I tried on so many I lost count,” she said.
Heisler, a senior exercise science major from Louisville, is busy applying for graduate school, communicating with wedding venues and shopping for wedding dresses. Heisler and her fiancé, Bellarmine senior and track team member Alex Wallingford, met in a BU 100 class during their first year of college. Heisler and Wallingford will marry on June 4, 2023.
“We wanted a quick turnaround between undergrad graduation and starting grad school,” Heisler said, “The process is stressful, now being a senior and doing applications, while maintaining grades and life, just doing all the things I have to do and planning a wedding.”
Planning any event requires communication, and Heisler said she knows how difficult the process can be. Heisler said that she regularly communicates with Wallingford, their parents, wedding venue representatives and event planners about the details of their wedding.
When Heisler is not planning her wedding, she is a full-time student, works as a hostess at Ramsi’s Café and holds a leadership position as the spiritual peer counselor of the women’s soccer team.
Heisler is down to the wire to plan her wedding, but Jayme Scott has some time to relax.
Scott, a senior communication major and Louisville native, will marry her high school sweetheart, Casey Stengel, on Feb 24, 2024. Their wedding ceremony will be held in the Catholic church next to where she went to high school and where her fiancé played high school football.
Scott will graduate in May and is looking forward to the wedding planning. “I know it’s going to be hard (to plan) especially with school, and when school ends, I can finally focus on the fun stuff,” Scott said.
Scott is also a Bellarmine volleyball player. “When the season ends, I will have more time to call venues and figure out plans, but knowing where the venue will be and having a date set makes things a little easier,” she said.
Winner, a senior business administration major, from Hamilton, Ohio, said he plans to graduate with an MBA in May of 2024 and get married the following month. Winner proposed to his girlfriend of five years, Darien Denney, on Oct 17, 2022.
“It was very in the moment… I almost forgot to ask her, you know, the question, ‘Will you marry me?’” Winner said.
Winner and Denney met in high school. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2021, and the couple has a long-distance relationship during the school year. Winner balances being a grad student and being a member of the lacrosse team, while Denney lives in Hamilton and works as an office assistant at a Cincinnati dermatology group.
The lacrosse team practices in the fall but has its season in the spring. “I am always super busy, but I am trying to enjoy the moment now that I am a senior,” Winner said.
“I am trying to focus and enjoy the stages of planning the wedding but want to slow down the school year because it is my senior year of college. Then when I graduate it is off to the races,” he said.
Winner said he is relieved that his fiancé is planning the wedding and he gets to “take the backseat.”
Alex Wallingford proposed to Meredith Heisler on Sept 25, 2022. Photo courtesy of Heisler.
Jayme Scott’s fiancé, Casey Stengel, proposed to her on a family beach trip in July. Photo Courtesy of Scott.
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