A Year of Wedded Bliss

ONE year (and now, 10 days) ago, I got unbelievably lucky and unimaginably blessed when undoubtably the smartest, most handsome, most Godly, most caring man on this green earth made the decision to marry me.  Is that an exaggeration?  I don't think so, but I'm biased.  We are actually celebrating our anniversary over the first weekend in October, but we did go out for dinner and spend some time discussing what a great idea getting married was.  So in honor of this momentous occasion, I'd just like to relive some of my favorite parts of our wedding.

Showers.  We have amazing friends and family and had plenty of showers and parties celebrating our marriage.  This is just a preview to what's really cool about a wedding (besides the marriage :)).  It's just really humbling to think that ALL of these people got up, got excited, and got together all to celebrate you. And it's certainly no downside to get tons of presents.

Our rehearsal dinner was my favorite part of the whole weekend.  What I love about these is that it's a smaller group of people, all of your family and people you care about the most.  You have time to really talk to everyone.  And everyone is SO excited, but the wedding isn't ending yet.  Our rehearsal dinner in particular was my pride and joy of the weekend.  I started planning it when I was finished with the reception and it could NOT have gone more perfectly.  We had it on a horse farm in a barn and it was absolutely beautiful.  Our families cooked the food (much to my mother's chagrin when she found out 3 days prior that I didn't actually hire a caterer) and it was AWESOME.

I love toasts.  Sean's dad had a sweet 2-3 minute congratulatory toast.

My family is slightly more animated and decided to forego the standard 2-3 minutes in favor of a skit.  

It was a source of some anxiety for me, the parts of my wedding that I knew would make it overwhelmingly obvious that my dad was not there.  The father-of-the-bride toast at the rehearsal dinner was one of them, followed shortly by the walk down the aisle and the father-daughter dance.  Unbeknownst to me, however, Jensen was not letting that anxiety overtake HIM.  Instead, he told me later that he felt that "the elephant in the room should be addressed".  The logic behind this, was, and I quote, "if you don't laugh, you'll cry".  So as my stomach turned and my mom got up to talk, I wished that it would just pass as quickly as possible.  Not that I didn't think that my mom would do a good job, but just that I wanted the highlighting of my dad's absence to end.  And that's when Jensen "addressed".  He came running into the barn dressed up like my dad and halted my mom.  "WAIT!  Christie!  This is the father-of-the-bride speech!  I made it.  WHEW!".  And in keeping with what his role would be for the remainder of the weekend, Jensen, in full on rare form, put on a 20 minute rendition of a father-of-the-bride rehearsal dinner toast.  Everyone died laughing, and of course, my family took a bow.

Part 2 to follow...