May 6 will be a busy day as a wedding reception is planned to be held on campus.
Student Body President Devon Rice, a senior marketing major from Bountiful, and Vice President of Student Life Anna Barfuss, a senior recreation and sports management major from Salt Lake City, are holding their wedding reception at the campus’ fountain to bring their love story full circle.
Utah Tech University’s campus holds a special and significant part in both Rice’s and Barfuss’ life as they met and fell in love while being involved in Utah Tech Student Association.
Rice said: “It all began when I hired her to be my assistant on student government. About two weeks into the first school year working together on UTSA, I went down the line asking all the people on the team if they would be comfortable with me asking her on a date. They all said yes, thank goodness. A couple weeks after our first date we made the relationship official.”
While this is not the first wedding to be held on Utah Tech campus, this is a venue to end this chapter of this couple’s love story. With the fountain being a favorite spot of Rice and Barfuss, they said the venue was an easy decision to make when planning their reception.
“Ever since we talked about the possibility of being married we always said that we definitely wanted to do it around the fountain,” Barfuss said. “Our whole relationship is based on campus. We met here, and we’ve spent countless hours together putting on events here.”
In order to try and plan their wedding at the fountain, Rice had to go through the standard event scheduling processes. While the fountain is reserved as part of the back-up for commencement, through multiple discussions, the reservation was able to be taken over to allow the fountain to house a ring ceremony and wedding reception.
Westley Petty, assistant to the vice president of event services, said: “Obviously, Devon and Anna have had a lot to do with many different aspects of campus being in UTSA, so we are very familiar with them. However, that doesn’t retract from the way that we treat this just as any other campus or community event.”
While the wedding on campus would be ideal to bring this love story full-circle, having the event occur the day after graduation does pose some risks. If there were to be inclemate weather, the graduation would be postponed to May 6, and the wedding reception would not occur. However, until those situations occur, the wedding of this year’s student body president will still be scheduled and will happen at the fountain.
With the open space at the fountain, all students are welcome to join the celebration of Rice and Barfuss May 6 at 9 p.m.
“The more people, the more fun,” Rice said. “We would love anyone who cares to join, to come join.”
