Olivia Bungum

Gonnermans selected as 2026 West Central Bridal cover couple

On a late November day in 2025, Emma (Berlinger) and Toby Gonnerman said their vows and began their lives together as husband and wife. 

Toby and Emma’s story began when they were in high school. Though they are high school sweethearts, Emma joked that when she asked Toby out the first time, he declined. 

“So, he was stubborn, but I was more stubborn,” Emma said. 

Eventually, they went on their first date, a double date with friends Sophie and Hunter at Old No. 1 in Morris. 

After graduating from Morris Area High School, Emma and Toby continued their relationship, but from a distance.

Emma attended college in Atchison, Kansas, while Toby attended South Dakota State University. 

The drive was about six hours between each other’s schools, Emma said, so they both made the trip several times. 

“We just kind of pushed through it,” Emma said. “You learn to communicate, and then it makes the times that you’re together even sweeter.” 

With how often they traveled to see each other, the pair also became friends with each other’s friends from their respective schools.

“The amount of miles we put on I-29, between the both of us going back and forth,” Emma said. “I don’t even want to do the math on how many miles it was.” 

Though a long-distance relationship is hard, Emma said that Toby supported her every step of the way, because this was her dream school. She also knew that attending SDSU was important to Toby, so being each other’s cheerleaders throughout their college years was an important foundation for their relationship. 

On one weekend trip to visit Emma, Toby decided to pop the question. 

It was a Friday night, and the pair had planned to go out on a date. It wasn’t uncommon for them to travel the 45 minutes to Kansas City, where there were more restaurants and things to do, but Emma knew her friends had plans that night in Atchison. 

She asked Toby if they could just grab something to eat in Atchison so they could meet up with her friends, but he was adamant about wanting to go to Kansas City. 

The whole drive to Kansas City, Emma said, she was grumpy. Meanwhile, Toby was hiding the engagement ring in the pocket of his car door. 

After dinner, the pair got in the car, and it wasn’t long before Emma noticed they weren’t going the right way home 

In Kansas City, there is an outlook where viewers can see the entire Kansas City skyline, and it was a place that the couple frequented.

However, this night, it was raining. When Toby pulled up to the outlook and asked Emma if she’d go on a walk with him, she knew something was up.

“I just started crying,” Emma said. “He grabbed an umbrella, we walked up to the outlook spot, and then he proposed.” 

Back in Atchison, the friends, who Emma thought had other plans, were busy preparing a surprise celebration for the newly engaged couple. 

“They were all in on it!” Emma said. Toby had planned the whole evening out. 

After the proposal came the work of planning a wedding. 

In the lead up to the Nov. 22 wedding, the couple would spend the 22nd of each month with a date night, and purposefully talk about anything but wedding planning. 

“It was just a fun time to spend together,” Emma said. 

The couple included several sweet details to be incorporated into their big day. 

One such detail, which was Toby’s idea, was making his suit tie out of Emma’s dress. To do this, Emma talked to the company she ordered her dress from, and they ordered an extra yard of fabric for the dress to make the tie, and the seamstress who did the alterations on the dress made it. 

During a wedding, the Father of the Bride gets to walk down the aisle with the bride and share in a father-daughter dance. Emma wanted to make sure that both her and Toby’s moms got something special, too, so pieces of each of their mothers’ dresses were used to wrap Emma’s bouquet. 

Instead of the traditional clinking of glasses to get the couple to kiss, they decided to order custom tambourines with their picture. 

“Those suckers were being shaken, like, every two minutes,” Emma said. Eventually, the couple had to assign other people to kiss so they could finally eat their meal. 

Planning a wedding while still in college can be a tall order. Emma graduated last May, but Toby didn’t graduate until a few weeks after the wedding.

“Our families were huge supports in everything,” Emma said.  “They were constantly there.” 

Another huge help was utilizing mostly local vendors, which kept everything in one place and gave them the peace of mind knowing who they were working with. 

“We trust our vendors,” Emma said. “That kind of eased the stress of everything.” 

Bringing everything back full circle, the couple had the wedding reception at Old No. 1, where they had their first date. They even made sure to take pictures in the very booth where they shared their first date. 

Emma’s biggest advice for planning a wedding is to simply enjoy it. It’s so easy to get into the nitty-gritty details, she said, but they can add up quickly and cause stress. Now that their wedding is done, she said she misses the fun of being able to plan it. 

“Looking back, I miss picking out all the little details that were so representative of Toby and I in our relationship,” Emma said. 

The biggest advice for the day of the wedding, Emma said, is to be present. She gave her phone to a personal attendant so she wouldn’t be distracted by it. That personal attendant used her phone all day to capture photos and videos. 

This was a special treat, Emma said, because a lot of times, you don’t get photos and videos back for a little while after the event. Being able to wake up the next morning to a phone filled with memories from the day before, from a totally different perspective, was a fun way to reminisce on a day that seems to fly by. 

As for the best part of the wedding day? Toby said it was seeing Emma walk down the aisle. 

Toby and Emma’s friends, Sophie and Hunter, were also married this year. Emma and Sophie were each other’s maids of honor. Sophie and Hunter will also be featured in this year’s West Central Minnesota Bridal Guide alongside Emma and Toby. To read more about these couples, and the many more who sent in photos and wedding details, make sure to pick up a copy of this years bridal guide, which will hit stands in March.