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Good Match
Good Match
by JENNY WOODRUFF | photography by WOODWARD AND RICK PHOTOGRAPHERS
The wheels began to turn when the moth- ers of Micajah Sturdivant and Grace Gore discovered their children were both single and would be in Memphis over Thanksgiving two years ago.
Sturdivant, who usually wouldn’t even allow his mother to pick out a shirt for him much less a date, uncharacteristically said yes when his mom told him about her plans.
“While my parents haven’t necessarily tried to set me up, my extended family has never held back,” he said. “Actually, on the day of our first date, I was over at a cousin’s house in Memphis and told him that I was going on a date and he immediately replied, ‘So, who in our family has set you up this time?’”
Grace, who had been set up by her mother before (a date that didn’t fare too well), also reluctantly agreed to meet Micajah. “To be honest, I didn’t have high hopes for this one,” she said.
The former Miss Tennessee was to sing the national anthem at the Memphis Grizzlies game at the FedEx Forum, so the two decid- ed to meet there.
“He came to the game and we sat together and talked,” she said. “I left and thought he had no interest in me whatsoever. He played it cool to say the least.”
Though Grace and Micajah had not crossed paths, the two discovered they knew many of the same people. Grace, originally from Grenada, had actually taken horseback riding lessons from Micajah’s mother the summer after she was in the fourth-grade. Sturdivant is a native of Greenwood.
“I had no idea that she had a son,” she said. “I knew a lot of people who went to Pillow Academy (I went to Kirk), including Micajah’s sister, Lee; but since we are five years apart in age, he was already out of high school when I started.”
After graduating from the University of Mississippi, Grace moved to Nashville to work on her doctoral degree in audiology at Vanderbilt School of Medicine. After her
first year of grad school, she took a year off to serve as Miss Tennessee America 2007. She founded Graceful Sounds Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides hearing aids and audiology services to children in need.
Micajah, also a graduate of Ole Miss, par- ticipated in the first Barksdale Honors College there. After graduation and two years of commercial banking in Memphis, he attended Harvard Business School, an honor which his father and grandfather experi- enced as well. Upon completion of his MBA, he moved to Jackson to become the director of asset management with the MMI Hotel Group, a hotel development and manage- ment company that his grandfather started with Earle Jones in 1956.
After just a few dates, Grace invited Micajah to spend New Year’s Eve at her par- ents’ lake house on Grenada Lake. “I jumped at the opportunity and am glad that I did because it was a night where we really got to learn a lot about each other in the sense that there were a lot of folks there who would be around for the rest of our lives if we ended up together (close friends, extended family) and everything just felt right for both of us,” he said. “While we didn’t talk about it at the time, that night and that place began to have special meaning for us.”
So when Micajah decided to propose, he knew that was where he wanted it to be.
“This girl has had folks do some pretty impressive things for her, so I wanted to do something that would be specific to us,” he said.
Grace thought that they were going to dinner with all four of their parents for the first time. “While our families have known each other, the six of us had never gotten together.”
She drove to Grenada straight from class on January 23, 2009, to her parents’ house to wait for Sturdivant’s parents to arrive.
“Then, my mom starts pestering me to drive out to the lake house to get a chip and dip platter she wanted to use,” she
said. “I certainly didn’t understand the importance of that platter seeing that I had just come in from driving all afternoon.
“Micajah said we should just go since we had plenty of time. When we got to the lake house I told him to wait in the car, but he said that it was a pretty night and we should hang out for a little bit.” The two sat down on the
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They decided on the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., because Grace wanted to get married in the mountains during her favorite time of the year, when the leaves change in the fall.
Emily and Ross Webster, Micajah and Grace Sturdivant
porch swing looking out over the lake and Sturdivant began recounting the New Year’s Eve party her parents had the year before.
That’s when Micajah dropped to his knee and Grace just blurted out “Yes! Yes!” before he could even say the word.
Micajah told Grace, “You are going to have to give me your hand!” It had not yet occurred to Grace that there would be a ring in the vicinity. “He put the most beautiful ring on my finger that he had designed just for me. Then he reached into his pocket and started messing with his phone,” she said.
“Moments later an amazing fireworks display lit up the sky over the lake.”
“Our parents were hiding in the dark across the inlet from the lake house with lighters and fireworks in hand,” Micajah said. “And most important of all, she said yes.”
“Micajah gave me the sweetest, most romantic, thoughtful proposal I can imagine,” Grace said.
The next step was planning the wedding.
When Gore was younger, she used to say she wanted to have a huge wedding in Grenada, have umpteen brides- maids and have a gigantic party of a wedding reception. “My sister certain- ly lived out that fairy tale nearly five years ago and it was the most magical hometown wedding ever,” she said. “At this point in our lives, Micajah and I both wanted something smaller with our families and closest friends there with us. We were fortunate to have several engagement parties in our hometowns leading up to our smaller wedding in Asheville, N.C.”
They decided on that location because Grace wanted to get married in the mountains during her favorite time of the year, when the leaves change in the fall. “What more beauti- ful place for that than Asheville? We visited Asheville shortly after we got engaged to look for the perfect moun- tain vista for our ceremony site. The Biltmore Estate offered the most beau- tiful, unobstructed views of the moun- tains, and we knew that it would be the perfect venue for us. Of course, we can’t control Mother Nature and had to change the ceremony site to a different lawn at the last minute, but the cere- mony was still beautiful, outdoors in God’s gorgeous fall creation.”
The process of planning the wedding
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was a lot of fun, according to both Grace and Micajah. “A lot of pressure was taken off just by accepting that I needed to turn over a lot of responsibil- ities to the wedding planner, event planner, florist, and the most important team member - my sweet mom,” Grace said. “Don’t get me wrong, I was very involved in big decision-making, but many of the fine details that may usual- ly cause the bride great stress were things that I had to ‘let go’ of.”
Grace had definite ideas of the feel she wanted and the aura she wanted to create, but as a full-time grad student there was no way she could stress about every detail.
The engagement lasted nine months and the two were married on October 17. Although the wedding, for Grace, was perfect, if she had to pick a favorite part, she would choose the moments right after the ceremony. “Micajah and I walked back down the aisle and through an iron gate to an open field,” she said. “For a few moments it was just us. We just looked at each other smiling
and saying ‘We’re married!’ ” Outside of the reverence of
exchanging their vows, Micajah enjoyed the general point that the size of the wedding was perfect. “While we would have liked to have everyone involved, a huge wedding can lose its purpose,” he said. “We were able to spend time with everyone in atten- dance. We got all the pictures, had all of the conversations, etc., that we wanted to have all night long.”
When asked if there was anything they would have changed, Grace said she would have changed the weather. “Our guests were wonderful and I never heard a single complaint about the cold, even though the wind chill was below 40 degrees,” Grace said. “The Farmer’s Almanac says that the average high for October 17 in Asheville is 68 degrees and it is supposedly the driest month of the year. I’m calling Farmer’s bluff on that.”
Micajah was disappointed his moth- er’s parents had to back out at the last minute because the Thursday before the wedding, his grandfather had a case of the flu. “I hate that they weren’t there to experience this great event with us, but he is feeling better now and there is no way that he should have been out
there in 40 degree weather at 92 years old with the flu.”
For their wedding trip, the couple went to Paradise, according to Gore.
Being in the hotel business, Sturdivant said he is a bit particular about where he stays. “I probably spent 30 plus hours researching various loca- tions around the world and ended up back in Mexico,” he said. “We went to Zoetry Paraiso de la Bonita Riviera Maya in Mexico, just south of Cancun,” Grace said. “I’ve never felt more like a queen, even in my days with a Miss Tennessee tiara.”
Currently the Sturdivants are living in a loft apartment in the Gulch area of downtown Nashville until May when they will move back to Jackson. “Marriage has taken me away to Nashville - temporarily,” Micajah said. “I have been given the opportunity to work from Nashville and commute to our corporate office in Jackson until Grace finishes up grad school in audiol- ogy at Vandy.”
Grace plans to start her externship in Jackson in May and hopes to bring Graceful Sounds to Mississippi.
Micajah, Mike and Jan Sturdivant, Lee Sturdivant Carby
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