Then Comes Marriage... (PART II)

So, do you think it's possible to plan a wedding without drama?

Of course not.

There was definitely no shortage of drama in our wedding planning. My birthday is 5-6-78. Why am I sharing this information? First of all, yes, that does in fact mean I turned 30 last month (boo!). But the purpose in mentioning it is that it's a cool birth date! Look at it again! 5, 6, 7, 8. How fun, right? Well, I was quite the excited little bride-to-be when I decided it would be SO fantastic and fun and memorable and logical to set our wedding date for February 4th. Why, you ask? 02-04-06! That's right! So fun! It would have been perfect because it gave us a good 4 months to plan our wedding. Probably doesn't sound like enough time to some of you brides out there, but for us, it would have been perfect. I already had a picture in my head of what I wanted for our big day. It was SOOOOOOOOO exciting!

Insert drama here. A family member had already planned their family's vacation for February, leaving on Saturday, February 4th. I tried my best to nicely ask them to postpone their departure by one day, offered to have our ceremony in the early afternoon so they could still leave that day, just a bit later than planned, and basically came up with every option I could think of that might allow us to "meet in the middle." Unfortunately, there was no budging to be done. It was the most painful and exasperating experience of my life and left me feeling as though not only my hopes and plans meant nothing to them, but that I myself--as well as my future husband--meant nothing to them. To be completely honest, I still feel there is a bit of resentment towards my husband and I to this very day. I wish it were different, but my relationship with that family member has never (and I believe will never) be the same again. It's SO unfortunate to have this kind of drama go down when planning the most important day of a person's entire life. To this day I still wonder if I was being unreasonable and not logical in wanting to be married on that date that was so special to me. Oh, well...

SO, as you may have guessed, we didn't get married on 02-04-06.

One Wednesday evening, hubs and I were sitting in the car in our church parking lot discussing the ongoing drama and what we could do to resolve it. See, we had moved forward with the planning and had the church booked, the reception location booked, and had already spoken with a few key florists and bakeries. But I just couldn't stand the idea that I was creating a gigantic rift in my family simply because I wanted to get married on a specific day.

In tears for the billionth time over it, with hubs' arms around me, I said, "Why don't we just get married when your family is in town for Thanksgiving?"

His response? "You're joking, right?"

I guess it would be important to mention at this point that we were having this discussion on Wednesday, November 2nd. Thanksgiving, of course, was Thursday, November 24th--a mere 3 weeks away.

"No, I'm serious! This way we can put an end to the drama and get married sooner!"

Hubs' parents, sister, sister's boyfriend, aunts, uncles, grandma and a few cousins were all coming for Thanksgiving. All of my family basically lives nearby, so they'll be around at that time, too.

He then replied with his typical response when he thinks I've jumped off the deep end. "Let's think about it more, sleep on it, and discuss it again tomorrow. If it's still something you want to consider, we can make some calls to see if we can get everything arranged."

I smiled and chuckled a bit. I already knew that once I made my mind up on something, it was going to happen--no matter what.

The next day, we made some calls. Finding a florist was IMPOSSIBLE since so many of them would be busy with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, but we were able to book the church (there was more drama to that, but we'll leave it out) and our pastor. The reception site we had previously booked for February was not available on our new date. We had to do some more digging there, but actually ended up booking a hotel that was literally about a mile from the church. Long story short (or at least shorter than it COULD be), everything lined up for us to get married on Friday, November 25, 2005.

The ceremony was held in my home church that I'd attended for 12 years at the time. I had my brother-in-law walk me down the aisle, then turn me over to my mom at the end so she could do the official "giving away" part. We said our vows, lit our unity candle and shared our first communion together. My favorite part of the ceremony was, of course, our first kiss. Hubs leaned in, and kissed me more passionately than I had ever known in my life. It seemed like the longest kiss ever, and in fact, I actually started to kinda push him away a bit after several seconds! Our guests got a good laugh out of it, and to this day it still embarrasses hubs when I mention it.

So I would like to share a few pics from our special day with you guys! These are all random and nothing too fantastic only because I didn't want to share any pics of our wedding party or any close-ups of hubs and I (he's real freaky about this crazy Internet thing and worries about someone hunting me down based on my pic and IP address--LOL!). So I didn't have many to choose from once I applied these prerequisites, but hopefully some of these give a tiny little glimpse into the most special day of our lives... At least, prior to the birth of our little one! That'll be coming up next for all my loyal readers! :)

Pre-ceremony. My dress was so pretty (if I may say so myself). It had some beautiful beading on the bodice and was strapless. The bottom of the dress and train had matching beading. It's SO hard to describe, and I'm not a fashionista at all!












After all that rambling above, I decided I'd better add a pic of my dress. Not the best one ever, but hopefully explains my poor description above.
















My bouquet.
















Our First Kiss. This was the aftermath. It had already gone down. Like all 12 seconds of passionate embracing. In front of the friends and family. And the pastor. ;)















The Cake. We loved the look of fondant, but the taste of buttercream. This was the perfect compromise between the two. It was buttercream smoothed to look like fondant. It was YUMMY!















Stealing a moment at the reception.















I certainly hope you all enjoyed this glimpse into our lovely wedding and reception! I plan to post on Monday about welcoming our little one. At least I'll try to wait 'til Monday. We'll see!