Country Singer Marries in Montana Ceremony

Tyler Barham is a married man! The country singer married longtime girlfriend Morgan Hauerwas in an intimate ceremony in Seeley Lake, Montana on June 18. The romantic wedding nuptials came more than a year after the couple became engaged, with Barham and Hauerwas confirming the exciting relationship update to PEOPLE, joking that “we’re still trying to get used to referring to each other as husband and wife instead of just calling each other ‘babe’ like we have for the last six years.”

The couple exchanged vows on a 40-acre property owned by Barham’s family, with the “World on Fire” singer’s uncle serving as officiant. For her walk down the aisle, Hauerwas wore a stunning gown purchased from Last Best Bridal in Missoula, with Barham donning a rented tuxedo from Rococo Bridal. The couple revealed to the outlet that they wrote their own vows, with the bride using a family ring from the 1950s that previously belonged to her grandmother Dee and her mother Helen. The couple also decided not to see one another until the ceremony, Barham sharing, “we decided not to do a first look because we wanted our first look at each other to be as Morgan was walking down the aisle. So we were both most excited to see each other in that moment and all the emotions that came with it.”

Barham and Hauerwas first met back in 2016 when the singer traveled to Missoula, Montana to perform at the Western Montana Fair for the local charity Chicks N’ Chaps. During his performance, Barham took a request for Toby Keith’s “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.” Barham didn’t know all of the words, though, but Hauerwas did. Barham shared that after that, he and his new bride “kept in touch and dated long-distance for nine months before I relocated back to Montana.” The couple became engaged in December 2020.

“Dating long distance helped grow our communication skills as well as helped us cherish the times we got to be together in person,” he said. “It tested our patience, showed us that the little creative things go a long way, and taught us both how to communicate better, because communication was over the phone was all we had since we were 2,000 miles apart. [But] after only a year of dating, I knew she was the one and wrote on a napkin, ‘I’m gonna marry you someday,’ which she still has.”

When it came to picking their wedding day, Barham and Hauerwas choose a very poignant day. June 18, 2022 marked the seventh anniversary of the death of Hauerwas’ father Troy, the musician telling PEOPLE, “in memory of him, we had an empty chair set out at the ceremony with his favorite cowboy hat and a teddy bear made out of his western shirts.” Now married, something the singer said is “exciting,” Barham he and his wife “are most excited to start building a family together and creating our own traditions.”