I’ve been married for almost twelve years and it’s starting to be weird to look back on my wedding day. For some amount of time after your wedding, you look at the photographs and say “I wouldn’t change a thing!” And I wouldn’t change a thing about how the day went or how I felt or how happy I was then or how happy I am now. But after twelve years, my style has changed SO much and it’s weird to think about what a wedding would look like if I were planning it today.
The day was perfect. It helped that I had a three ring binder full of tear sheets that I had been saving for years. Not to mention that my mom is pretty much Martha Stewart and she runs a tight ship. I hear girls talk about how stressful wedding planning can be and how overwhelmed they felt and I just didn’t. I had no idea what the budget was and I never thought about a single deadline. I handed the binder over to my mom, picked out a wedding dress and showed up for pictures. I know how rare and how wonderful that is and I could not be more appreciative of everything my mom did for us.
The morning of my wedding, I woke up in my sister’s bed for the last time. Although we had our own rooms from the time I was about ten years old, we almost always slept together. In my room when we were younger and in her room once I moved out and went to college. It was crazy thinking it was my last morning to wake up in that house. It was like that scene from Father of the Bride. I remember that my best friend from college took a picture of me as I walked down the front steps that morning.
My other best friend from college couldn’t be there because she was in the hospital on bed rest. She never got to wear her maternity bridesmaids dress, but I had carried her cake from my shower in the hospital the week before and I was so sad she couldn’t be there. The fourth member of our tight-knit group stayed with her that day, but they called me on the phone and talked to me while I was getting ready. I had my makeup done already and my mom was helping to button my dress when the phone rang. I cried through the phone call, but was over the moon happy to talk with them since they couldn’t be there.
Josh and I saw each other before the ceremony and I never regretted that moment. Nobody was in the room except for our photographer, but I remember seeing my bridesmaids peeking through the window. I kept myself together until my dad came into the bridal room. He and I have always had a special relationship and we’re both overly emotional. He’s a crier, so send him in wearing a tux and I’m bound to shed some tears. Our photographer was standing in the aisle when we walked in and he told me to pull myself together. He wasn’t letting me pass by until I stopped with the histrionics, so I took a deep breath and walked down the aisle. I can’t even describe the feeling when I saw Josh at the front of the church. He was so handsome in his tux and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on him. I loved that he cried through our vows and that we were both so emotional. We had been together almost six years at that point. This day was a long time coming.
Our reception was beautiful, but we couldn’t wait to get out of there and start our life together. We had asked that they fill a picnic basket full of food from our wedding and leave it for us. We left the reception in a vintage car, but it only drove us around the block to our waiting car. When we got there, we realized that the basket wasn’t there. Imagine how surprised my mom and her friends were when we came knocking on the church kitchen’s door in our wedding finery looking for food. It turns out, they put it in the trunk of the getaway car and it was well on its way back where it came from! Fortunately, someone volunteered to chase it down and get it for us and left it on our front porch. We recovered it in the middle of the night and loaded up on cake and goodies.
There was a joke about whether or not Josh could get the buttons on my dress undone and our neighbor volunteered to come over and get me out of it! Fortunately we made it without assistance and I had enough birdseed in my dress to cover every square inch of my body, dress or not. We had to get up a little after 3 o’clock in the morning to get ready and head to the airport and I realized then that I left my flat iron and hairspray at my parents’ house. There is no way I could survive a honeymoon without those essentials. Can you imagine me driving to their house in the middle of the night, sneaking in and retrieving it all?! Chris picked us up at our house and took us to the airport and, I’ll admit, it was a little weird seeing our people the morning after our wedding night!
I look back on that day with the fondest of memories. There are so many funny things that happened and little moments that I remember so clearly. We took communion as our first meal together. I love that we spent our first night as husband & wife in our new home. Josh prayed for us in the dark of our house that night. Our wedding clothes were in a pile of birdseed on the guestroom bed when we left for the airport. There was a classic Kristin move at the airport when I thought I’d lost my driver’s license and had a panic attack for everyone in security to see. I was wearing RED WINDSUIT PANTS?! I changed my mind. I wouldn’t change a thing.
This is part five of a multi-part series I’ve been sharing on the blog about how our relationship started. Click here to read the beginning of our story: part one || part two || part three || part four || part five
