Alex and Whitney Morgan work together, study together and live together. Now thanks to Netflix’s latest hit ‘Marriage or Mortgage,’ they’re tying the knot too!
Some couples are lucky to find time to see each other once a week to go on a date–but not Alex and Whitney Morgan, who spend 99 percent of their time together. As fellow emergency room nurses, Alex met Whitney at work.
“Whitney was actually my mentor right out of nursing school, so she was like my teacher,” Alex said.
Not only do they work together, but they also live together and are both studying to be nurse practitioners. The only thing missing? A wedding…and a house.
Alex and Whitney got engaged in 2019 and hope to get married soon. But they’re also sharing an apartment with their cat and want to expand to a house to make room for kids, but they only have the budget for one or the other. The solution? Netflix!
In its latest reality show Marriage or Mortgage, couples like Alex and Whitney get to meet with Nashville-based real estate agent Nichole Holmes and wedding planner Sarah Miller who show the couples dream homes and weddings they could have with their budget, giving them the chance to make one of their dreams come true.
“We were actually on our way back from Florida for vacation, so we had a long drive,” Alex said of deciding whether to go on the show. “We talked about it for what felt like forever, but it was probably like two minutes and then decided, you know what? Let’s just go for it. What do we have to lose?”
Sarah and Nichole went to work showing the couple everything from wedding gowns and decor to homes that fit their needs. Whitney says experiencing them both made it a tough decision.
“It put us in the moment for the wedding and made us kind of feel like we were there, but I also liked looking at houses,” she said. “I mean, you can daydream all you want, but when you’re in a home and you can kind of put yourself in that situation, it’s an awesome feeling.”
One of the most powerful moments the two shared was trying on wedding gowns in front of each other and Alex’s mom.
“Seeing Whitney in the wedding dress and having my mom there and seeing her get emotional, and then having my veil on and everything really made me envision it,” Alex said. “And my mom doesn’t usually get very emotional, so seeing her tearing up made it very real.”
“The best wedding I’ve ever been to!”
That experience was one of the reasons Alex and Whitney ultimately decided to choose the wedding.
“Every person gay or straight, you look forward to envisioning the person you’re going to be marrying all dressed up,” Whitney said. “And I think seeing Alex in a dress that just fit her personality and fit her body like a glove, it just brought it all home for me.”
Whitney says they also knew their wedding would take on a greater meaning, something they both wanted to honor.
“Alex came out before I did and when I came out, I never once second guessed it. I was out and proud and I just took that leap of faith and went for it. And Alex did the same, but we were now able to do it together and our love was strong and still is,” she said. “But we had the discussion of, we’re engaged now. We can buy a home at any point in our lives, but we want to get married now and really showcase our love out loud and proud. We didn’t want to stop that momentum. We just wanted to keep it going.”
When it came to their wedding day, everything turned out perfect–despite a few twists and turns.
“Our venue ended up falling through days before the wedding,” Whitney said. “We were at work in the ER and we got this news and our hearts sunk. I mean, you can imagine, your head is spinning.”
Luckily, it was Sarah to the rescue!
“Sarah pulled a rabbit out of a hat and figured it out, and we’re actually glad that the first venue fell through,” Whitney said. “We were looking forward to it, but this second venue that ended up coming from all of that was probably the best thing that could’ve happened to us.”
The wedding ended up being their dream come true.
“The ceremony itself was just what we wanted. We wanted an intimate small group of people, close family and friends there, and that was perfect,” Whitney said. “The perfect size, the perfect people that have been there to support us and love us. And the aesthetic was exactly what we wanted.”
“It was very emotional,” Alex added. “I was sobbing during my vows. I don’t cry that often, but it was waterworks.”
“–which I loved,” Whitney said. “It melted my heart.”
Followed by their intimate ceremony was a huge reception with their extended friends and family featuring a live band and open bar.
“We’ve literally been told multiple times since our wedding, ‘That was the best wedding or best reception I’ve ever been to because it was just so fun,’” Whitney said. “You knew everybody, everybody had a good time together. It was just like a big friend group that had a great time.”
Where are they now?
Their dream wedding also came in the nick of time. They got married in February right before Covid hit, and had just enough time to honeymoon in Thailand.
“Two weeks after we got back, they shut down the borders,” Whitney said. “We hit the ground running, started working in the ER in the peak of Covid, and everything has been different since our wedding. I feel like our wedding was the last party of our friends before Covid hit, so we’re very humbled and grateful for having that experience and that opportunity.”
“It’s like one extreme to another,” Alex said of going directly from their honeymoon to full time work in the ER during a pandemic.
“We were on the honeymoon and I was on the phone with one of my friends and they said, ‘You might want to bring back toilet paper from your honeymoon,’” Whitney said. “I brought back a whole bag of toilet paper. I didn’t know what I was coming back to, but we kind of went with it and going through all of Covid in 2020, it’s made us very, very, very grateful for having had that wedding.”
Now that vaccines are being rolled out and work is slowing down just a little bit, Alex and Whitney are starting to talk about buying a house again. A few months after their wedding, they moved from Nashville to Alex’s family’s vacation home in Park City, UT.
“We were offered to stay here and take care of the house while we’re in nurse practitioner school rent-free and we can put more money away for a future home, so we decided let’s take advantage of that,” Whitney said. “We’re not going to stay in Utah, but we’re going to decide where we want to land permanently. And that gives us that time to travel as much as we can with Covid and explore around to see where we do want to end up–and it may be Nashville, who knows.”
“Maybe in a year, once we’re finished school, I think we’ll seriously revisit purchasing a home,” Alex added.
They’re also starting to talk about having kids again, something which the pandemic pushed back. They both want to carry a baby and say they’ll start looking into their options when they graduate in the next year.
“There’s stepping stones to go through, and I think Covid kind of put the brakes on just for a second because that took precedent,” Alex said. “But once we get closer to graduation, I think we’ll definitely start making those steps.”
To find out where the rest of the couples from Marriage or Mortgage are now, keep following AfterBuzz TV for interviews with the cast. You can stream all ten episodes on Netflix now.
