Summer Challenge: Only 3 Weeks Behind

Sheesh! You'd think I could do better than THAT!

To try to keep up on the summer challenge I committed to - here is the assignment from 3 weeks ago:

"June 21 - Remember Your Vows - post pictures of your wedding day. We will review the sacredness of this day."

Well, I flop on this one - I have no idea where our wedding photos are! Okay, actually, they're in an album in the living room, but as far as the CD of pics that my sister-in-law took and gave us (and is around... somewhere), I couldn't find it if I had to! (I am really, really bad about photos and keepsakes. Really bad. Number of photos I've printed out of either of our children = zero. Yup, bad.)

So I'll tell you our wedding story!

There actually isn't much to it - not because there isn't a big long story, but because I really didn't have much to do with it. Long story.

Anyhow, DH and I got engaged after 1 1/2 years of dating, and then were engaged for one year before getting married after I graduated from college. Since I was the organist at our church, and Joe was the youth pastor, we knew we'd be inviting the whole church to our wedding, as well as family and friends. So it was a pretty big event! We chose to do it at a grumpy Lutheran church a town or two over, as my church was too small (and too ugly!!!). I say it was a grumpy church because we actually had a really hard time convincing them to let us have our wedding there - my pastor had to intercede for us and twist their arm (he had done his internship there, so he had a bit of pull). It was an absolutely gorgeous church - like a mini-cathedral.

There was a ton of prep work to be done - all the usual shopping, dress-hunting (I still can't believe I paid $700 for a dress I wore ONCE - if I had to do it over again, I would borrow, rent or find one used), etc. A lot of fun! I had 3 bridal showers - one for church, one for friends/family, and one for my girlfriends, who brought me a bunch of darling little "outfits" (tee hee) - none of which fit now, LOL!

One absolutely hilarious bit was having to deal with the church's wedding coordinator. My mom dubbed her the "Wedding Nazi" because she was so, so, so uptight about every detail and every rule. She enjoyed enforcing rules just because they were rules, and it was sometimes infuriating. "Why can't you have a ribbon on the unity candle? Because it says right here in the rule book that there shall be no ribbons upon unity candles! That's why!" And etc. etc. etc. A few years later, upon talking to a member of that church, my mom learned coincidentally that the wedding coordinator was also called the Wedding Nazi by her own congregation!

We had a lovely wedding - very relaxed, no major crises. DH and I were very strict about not seeing each other before the ceremony, so we kept in contact via cell phone to make sure that we did not accidentally run into each other beforehand.

A funny note on that one: We interviewed one wedding photographer who was adamant that photos should be shot before the ceremony. He came to my house and gave us a 30 minute lecture on why we should do photos before the wedding, and why anything else would be a disaster. It was like being in the principal's office. Afterward, he said "So, what do you think?" DH and I looked at each other and said "No." That was the end of that. We hired another (much better) professional photographer who easily managed to do all of our wedding photos after the ceremony and get us back to the reception before all of the guests had even exited the church.

We had a beautiful cake, made for us by my SIL. The reception hall was so incredibly hot (mid-June, California, no air conditioning) that the cake began to melt before the ceremony even started. The crew went to work frantically setting up fans to cool it, and trying to prop it - and it survived beautifully, and was absolutely delicious (my SIL does everything well!).

Our reception was lovely. DH and I, after a brief break, decided that we really ought to greet our guests, so we spent the entire evening - about 4 hours - going from table to table, taking about 5-10 minutes per guest/group, saying hi and talking. It was so much fun. We were actually the last to leave, pretty much, and they ended up chasing us out and telling us to get lost. :) My SIL and her husband gave us a ride to our hotel, their car suitably soaped for the situation (thankfully they avoided the rice). Their gift to us was two nights at the Mission Inn, a lovely time that I shall remember - we want to go back there to stay sometime (when we have mega bucks - not cheap!).

One of my clearest memories of those two days is of DH in the bathroom, suddenly deciding that it would be a great idea to see if he could belch the lyrics to some song or other. He could, and did. What a honeymoon memory!

Our honeymoon was a camping trip - something I was quite used to, but it was DH's first camping trip. Such fun! We had a rough start, though - Our first night was in Pismo Beach, and the state park was full - so we had to camp in an RV campground - about 10 feet from the train tracks, so we were blasted all night, and then soaked by the sprinklers in the morning. The next night, DH insisted on a hotel! Thankfully he agreed to give camping another go, and we became pros. We camped up and down the coast of CA and OR, and had a lovely time - and ate wayyyy too much fried fish. And we broke our bank account going back for blackberry cobbler at the Trinidad Bay Eatery in Trinidad, CA - one of my favorite restaurants in one of my favorite towns.

And then we were off for Arizona!!

Much love, all! I'll go do something productive now! I'll try to catch up on last week's assignment soon.