"This was so much more than I ever expected" said Angie Baldwin, owner of Hottie's Boutique in Elkhart, who ran a contest last fall to give away a wedding dress and some accessories. Baldwin asked for military brides-to-be to write down their love story and send it in to the store, where she and some associates would choose the winner.
From there, things veered down an emotional path.
"She was so humble," Baldwin said of Diehl, who entered the contest with a letter she titled "Military Love Story." "What really struck me was how she really wanted to do this for him -- not for her, even after all she's been through."
Diehl's brief references to her pain-riddled, dysfunctional childhood, which included a stint in foster care, a teenage pregnancy and the parenting responsibilities for three siblings, were eclipsed in the letter by her desire to give her military fiancé the wedding she felt that he deserved.
Her letter stood out to Baldwin because of how simple the requests were that she had for her wedding -- one bridesmaid and some flowers, instead of an entourage and a forest of greenery.
As she shared the story with others, it touched them too. One by one a pair of restaurant owners offered to donate food for a reception, the MV/RH offered its facility to host the event, a seamstress donated alterations on the vintage wedding gown that the diminutive bride selected from Hottie's -- the offers of donations simply kept coming, and soon Baldwin had an entire wedding planned.
"It's amazing. The relationships I've made because of this, that I never expected to -- they'll last forever," Baldwin said.
More than a few mother-of-the-bride duties wound up falling to Baldwin as well, given that Diehl is distant from much of her own family. Now, as an adult, Diehl recounted the reasons why in a practiced tone.
An inattentive, alcoholic mother and absent father forced Diehl and her siblings to care for each other when they were young, with the majority of the responsibility falling to the eldest child, which was Diehl. Foster care and two pregnancies followed before she was 20.
"I know what she's been through. That's why this is such a beautiful moment," said Diehl's long-time pastor, Harold Gingerich of Eden Worship Center in Topeka.
The Goshen couple met through friends about a year ago, and Diehl was taken aback by something about Bontrager that she'd never experienced before. Matron of honor Sherise Arbogast remembers it clearly.
"I remember, you called me and said, 'He just loves my kids!'" Arbogast said.
Diehl confirmed that her children, 4-year-old John and 3-year-old Leilyn are first on her priority list.
"But he's everything that I never had," she said solemnly, of Bontrager. Everything I never thought I'd have."
And the 19-year-old Bontrager isn't daunted by instant fatherhood, either.
"They started calling me Dad just about a week ago," he said, beaming with pride.
With Bontrager due to return to active duty in Iraq at the end of this week, the honeymoon will be short for all four of them. But, once again thinking of her husband, Diehl had asked in her letter to have the wedding during one of his breaks instead of at the end of his tour this summer, so that he could come home and rest when his tour is over instead of coming home to frenzied wedding planning.
"We'll just hang out and be a family," Bontrager said.