by Cole
We also set up boundaries and accountability for ourselves. My best little boundary and accountability partner was my four-year-old daughter. Ev slept in my bed every night. While we knew she’d need to start sleeping in her own room after Cole and I got married, before then her presence really helped us. No one else was going to get in that bed. And if for some reason I didn’t sleep in there with her, she’d wake up and come find me.
But it’s not just the fact that Ev was there. It’s that I know she’s going to grow up, and she’s going to have boyfriends someday. I wanted to be able to look her in the eye and tell her that Cole and I waited, and that was the best decision we’d ever made. I’ll admit that I’d had sex with boyfriends in the past—she is proof of that—but I wasn’t walking with God then. When I met Cole and got right with God, everything changed. Believe me, knowing I will have to answer Everleigh’s questions someday really motivated me to keep my commitment to purity. I knew from experience how not waiting ruined my self-esteem and made guys think less of me. I don’t want my daughter and any future kids God might give us to go through that.
Our YouTube and Instagram followers also kept us accountable. That’s one of the reasons why we were so open about our relationship and our commitment to purity. The videos of us talking about our relationship didn’t get as many views as us taking Ev to Disneyland or the three of us dancing in unicorn costumes, but they were really important to us. We wanted people to know what was going on with us, to show them not only what it looks like to put God first, but we also knew that if we were this open about sex and waiting and then messed up, we’d lose all credibility, and we’d lose our influence through social media. Messing up would make a lie out of everything we’d worked so hard to build. Knowing so many people followed us and were counting on us gave us that extra push we needed to keep our commitment.
Cole
As our wedding day got closer, Savannah and I became a lot more careful about our boundaries. We limited the time we were alone together, which was easier in the last couple of weeks before the wedding because there were so many people around all the time. I also texted all my friends who held me accountable. I asked them to text me every night and every morning to make sure I was still good and that I had my head on straight. When my head wasn’t on straight, I talked to them on the phone until it was. I kept hearing the lies from the Devil justifying why it would be okay for Savannah and me to go ahead and sleep together, but then I told myself that I’d hate to have waited all these years as a single guy, and these past twelve months with Savannah, only to blow it in the last couple of weeks.
I also went back to something I wrote about in an earlier chapter. In those last few weeks I fought against the tendency to obsess about our wedding night and finally having sex for the first time. I had to check my spirit to make sure my motivations for getting married were pure. While sex is an important part of a healthy marriage, it’s not the most important part. Would I love Savannah any less if for some reason that part of our marriage was taken from us? No, never. I reminded myself that just as the marriage ceremony wasn’t nearly as important as the marriage, neither was the wedding night.
In the end, by God’s grace and the power He gives, we did wait, and God has blessed us in an incredible way. I don’t feel any pride about waiting because I know my heart. This wasn’t something I did by my own willpower or something Savannah did because she’s so strong. God enabled us to keep this commitment. We were willing to wait, and He made us able. That’s how God works. It’s awesome when you get to experience it.
23
Loving Ev
Cole
Moving to California and getting engaged didn’t just impact the way I felt about Savannah. My love for Everleigh grew so much as well. When I first met Ev, I thought she was just the cutest kid in the world with a huge, adorable personality. I loved hanging out with her and playing with her on her level. But becoming her playmate is not the same as loving her with a father’s love.
It’s funny when I think back to how people came up to me at VidCon when I had Ev with me and told me how cute my daughter was. I never corrected them, but I also thought it was hilarious because given the age difference between Savannah and me, if I was Ev’s biological father, I would have gotten Savannah pregnant when I was fifteen. Anyone who knew the skinny fifteen-year-old me knows there’s no way on planet Earth that that would have happened. Sav would have taken one look at me and said, “No way.”
During the first few months Savannah and I dated, Everleigh always called me Cole. After she came out to Alabama with Savannah and spent more time with me, she started calling me Daddy Cole. I was good with that. I know a lot of kids resent their stepparents. An awkward tension can hang in the air. Even though Ev was only four, I knew that was a possibility when I moved to California. I prepared myself for it. Having fun with me on trips and visits was one thing, but I entered a whole new dynamic when I moved in. Now she had to share me with her mom with no end in sight. I wasn’t going to go back to Alabama after a few days. I prayed that God would open her heart to accept me as a father figure. I did not expect her to love me like a father. I had no right to expect that. Whatever she eventually felt for me, I wanted her to see in me a man who loves his wife and treats her with respect and honor. My prayer was that when Ev grows up she will choose a man who will love her the way I love her mom. If she did not see anything else in me, I prayed she saw that.
After I moved into Savannah’s mom’s house, Everleigh and I developed our daily routine. The two of us were always the first two up, so we ate breakfast together every morning. We sat down at the breakfast table and ate our cereal or toaster waffles, and we talked. We talked about what we were going to do that day or what she wanted to do or just about anything in the world Ev wanted to talk about.
During one of our table talks, just the two of us, I asked her if it would be okay if someday I married her mommy, and she totally approved. Maybe that talk was at lunch, not breakfast, but I remember it was just the two of us. Not long after that, Everleigh called me Daddy for the very first time. Not Daddy Cole, just Daddy. That brought tears to my eyes. I felt so incredibly blessed that she did this totally on her own. She didn’t have to, but she did, and I loved it. That made us feel like a real family, and it made me that much more anxious to make it official on July 9.
Once Everleigh called me Daddy, she never called me anything else. She introduced me to her friends as her dad. When I picked her up at her preschool, she sprinted over to me saying “Daddy!” in a way that just melted my heart. I know the other thirty-five dads picking up their kids had to look at me and think I was her much older brother, but I didn’t care. Hearing her call me Daddy was just the most amazing feeling in the world. Some days I was simply overwhelmed by how good God was by putting this amazing kid in my life. There were days I could hardly believe that I had the privilege of getting to be a dad to her.
The moment that touched me the most came a little more than two months before Sav and I got married. We planned on vlogging a swim party and our day leading up to it. That morning Everleigh asked me if she could vlog by herself. I told her sure and set up the camera for her outside. She set everything up at a picnic table where she played with some magic sand and just talked to the camera. I had no idea what she said or what she did until that night when I sat down to edit the recordings and get everything ready to upload to YouTube. Tears came to my eyes as I watched her videos. Everleigh looked at the camera and started talking about her family. She said she has a mommy that she loves so much and she has a daddy who she loves so much. At one point she said my name, Cole LaBrant, and then she said, “I call him Daddy.” I couldn’t even finish editing because I was crying like a baby. About that time Savannah and Everleigh came into the room, and they both wanted to know what was going on. I showed them the video, and Savannah started crying too. Everleigh looked at the two of us and said, “What are you guys doing?” The fact that she had no idea why he
r talking about me being her daddy on the video had made us cry made the moment that much more special. She was just a little girl talking about her family that she loves. Why would anyone cry over that?
Hearing her say those words reinforced to me the surprising, wonderful love of God. Before I met Savannah, I never in a million years thought I would fall in love with a girl who had a kid. Yet, now, here I was, in this family that God put together with a woman who loves me and with a soon-to-be stepdaughter who loves me. I felt so thankful. I wish there was a stronger word than thankful. So many times situations like this do not have happy endings, but ours does. We could not have done this on our own, and I knew I didn’t do anything to deserve this kind of love. I felt so in awe of God and overwhelmed by the love He had shown us. I pray that I will never, ever take Savannah or Everleigh or their love for me for granted.
Before I close this chapter, I need to add one more note. I know I wrote this in an earlier chapter, but it needs to be repeated here as well: Everleigh has a biological father, and I am not in any way trying to replace him. He has regular visitation times with her, and I will never, ever say anything negative about him around Ev. I want her to know and love her father. But I also know that I am the one who is with her day in and day out. I want her to feel a father’s love from me every day of her life. I’m not competing for her affection. However she feels about me is up to her. It is my responsibility to love her unconditionally, and that’s what I am going to do until the day I die.
24
Countdown to the Wedding
Savannah
Soon after Cole asked me to marry him, I asked a couple of my friends if they thought it might be possible to plan a wedding in two months. They all told me I was crazy and told me to stop trying to move up the date. Originally Cole and I had talked about getting married in October. Then it became September. Then August. And finally July. Honestly, if we could have had it in February or March, I’d have done it. I didn’t care if we had fifty guests or one hundred fifty. The flowers didn’t matter nor any of the other details that take so long to plan. It may sound sad to some of the girls reading this, but I never had a dream wedding in mind. As I wrote before, for the longest time I never even thought I’d get married. Then when Cole and I started talking about it, I wanted the simplest wedding ever. I told Cole, “I don’t care about anything else. I just want to marry you.” My mom and sister convinced me that I needed to pay more attention to the wedding itself and plan one I would always remember. I agreed, but I still wanted to have it as soon as possible.
After we set the date to July 9, I stopped trying to move it up. That didn’t give us much time to plan everything. As Cole and I wrote in an earlier chapter, our main focus during this time was preparing ourselves to be married for a lifetime rather than obsessing over one day. My mom did all the obsessing for me. For more than five months, my wedding consumed her life. If not for her, there’s no way we could have pulled it off when we did.
Even though my mom graciously agreed to do the wedding planning for us, Cole and I still had a lot to do. The night after Cole proposed, the two of us sat down and talked about how excited we were and how fast we hoped the time would go by. Then we got into the wedding planning itself. I had no idea how much work goes into even the simplest of weddings. I don’t know if work is the right word. It was work for my mom, but a lot of the things we had to do for the wedding were just fun. I enjoyed them all, especially dress shopping.
My mom, Michelle, and, of course, Everleigh and Ava went with me to start looking for the perfect wedding dress. I thought it would take all day. Most brides try on a ton of dresses and go from store to store looking for the dress. Me, I am not like most brides. We went to one store. I looked around at all the dresses on their hangers. One caught my eye. Even before I tried it on, I told everyone I was pretty sure I was going to like this one. I tried it on and as I did I noticed another dress on a hanger that I really loved. I put that one on and said, “This is it. I’m ready.”
My mom and Michelle laughed at me. “You aren’t even going to try on anything else?” they asked.
“Nope. I like this one,” I said and I bought it. I had my dress.
Next it was time to go shopping for bridesmaids’ dresses. Rather than me pick out one dress for everyone, I decided to have my bridesmaids go with me and have them pick out their dresses. I chose the color but they all picked out the style they liked best. I thought this was a lot easier than trying to find one dress style that looked good on all ten of my bridesmaids. Yes, you read that right. I had ten bridesmaids. So much for a simple wedding, right? I didn’t plan on having that many. It just sort of happened. When I tried to decide which of my friends to ask to be bridesmaids and which to leave out I decided I didn’t want to decide. I asked them all. I felt sorry for Cole. He nearly had to go find a couple of guys on the street to come up with ten groomsmen.
Dress shopping with my ten bridesmaids was a blast. The store had around twenty-five different styles from which to choose from the boho-chic brand Show Me Your Mumu. All of the dresses were just darling, so I didn’t care which one they chose. I really wanted every dress to be kind of different anyway. In fact, when it came time to decide how to line up my ten friends, I lined them all up stylistically, putting dresses that looked good together next to one another.
After everyone picked out their dresses, we all went to lunch. I wanted our shopping trip to be fun because that’s the way I wanted everything surrounding my wedding to be. This was going to be the happiest day of my life. How could it be if I stressed over every little detail? I wanted to have a good time with everything connected to the wedding. I didn’t just want to enjoy my wedding day, I wanted to enjoy every day leading up to it!
Cole
My main role in the actual wedding planning was pretty much saying yes to everything Savannah wanted. My favorite question, though, was which wedding cake we should choose. Together we tasted dozens of cake samples from different bakers. Sampling all those cakes was awesome.
One of the biggest decisions we had to make about the wedding was the right venue. Finding a great place in Southern California wasn’t hard; finding one that was in our budget was. Wedding venues around here are really expensive. Everything connected to weddings out here is expensive. I am so thankful I fell in love with a girl with tastes as simple as my own, and who understands the value of money as much as I do. Both of us wanted to have a really nice wedding, and we knew we needed to splurge on some things here and there to do that, but we did not want to overspend. We have friends who spent fifty, sixty, even one hundred thousand dollars on their weddings. After going through this myself I can see how easily that can happen. Some people we know are still paying off their wedding debt four and five years later. We did not want to do that. Like I said, we wanted a nice wedding, but we did not want to go into debt to pull it off. We also decided we’d rather splurge on our honeymoon than the wedding.
We looked all around Huntington Beach and other places near the ocean for a venue, but all of them were too expensive or not available or both. Finally we decided to look inland. Someone told us about a wedding barn in Temecula so we drove over to check it out. We loved it. The barn was perfect and the outdoor area where we’d hold the ceremony was beautiful. The place even had animals like a real farm, including a crazy spitting llama we featured in one of our vlogs. Sav and I both loved the venue, and we loved the price. It was less expensive than the places near the coast we’d checked out. The more we walked around the place the more perfect it felt. At one point I walked under the arch where Sav and I would stand four months later as we recited our vows to each other. Standing there, I had a moment of pure joy and thankfulness and disbelief. I was like, How did I get here? How did this happen? I’m living in California about to get married to this incredible, beautiful woman and become a father to this awesome kid, and God has blessed us beyond anything I ever thought possible. This was such a gratifying moment. I knew this w
as the place. We put our deposit down and locked it up for July.
When we told our friends we found the perfect venue, they warned us that Temecula in July was going to be unbelievably hot. I didn’t listen. When we went to check out the place, the weather was perfect. Of course, we went out there in February or March. I hadn’t lived in California long enough to realize that inland areas are great in the winter, but my friends were right. In July, when it is seventy-five degrees in Huntington Beach, the temps inland can be in the triple digits. Both Savannah and I decided not to worry about that. The venue seemed perfect. We’d worry about the weather later if we had to.
My biggest concern during this time, beyond building a strong relationship with Savannah and Everleigh, was making the transition from using social media as a way to earn enough money to get me through college to it becoming a full-time job that would enable us to support our family. The first step came right after we started dating, when we moved from musical.ly to YouTube as our primary outlet. When our vlogs started racking up millions of views, they began generating a consistent monthly income. Without that consistent check coming in each month, the transition from part-time to full-time job might not have happened. Savannah and I had both done brand deals in the past, and we still do them today. Some of the brand deals are very generous, but back then they were much smaller and came in sporadically. Consistent income allowed us to budget and plan for our future.