Today is Jason and I's 13th wedding anniversary. You always know our anniversary is close when the Tennessee/Alabama game is on - we had some groomsmen not happy with us. I don't have those "I don't remember anything" thoughts towards our day. I remember most about the day and I cherish those memories.
I wasn't one of those girls that dreamed about her wedding all her life. Don't get me wrong, all I wanted to do was to get married, but I didn't plan out the dress and flowers from age 6 like many girls do. Therefore, planning the wedding was quite easy and very inexpensive.
As we were planning the wedding, we initially chose August for the month, but I'm so glad we ended up with October (Fall is my favorite season). My brother was getting married in May and mom requested a little more time between weddings.
If we had been married in August I would have been 19 when I got married, but I was a young 20 instead. Here we are at our rehearsal dinner (this is one of those pictures you look back on as an adult and wonder why your dress was so short - I just wore this "dress" Sunday to church as a shirt). 
Since I didn't have any major expectations for our wedding, I didn't mind taking all our pictures before the wedding. Jason and I had a moment in the sanctuary by ourselves before pictures began, so the "first time he saw me" moment was still a special time.
Our wedding party consisted of two best men (Pops and John Eldridge), a maid of honor (Connie Hildebrand) and a matron of honor (Kristy Hadley), plus six other groomsmen (Charlie Brown, Philip Caines, Daniel Brown, David Caines, Jon Dutton and JR Caines) and six other bridesmaids (Ruth Caines, Sarah Caines, Alice Tucker, Heather Harris, Julie Kesler and Shonda Caines). Plus, two flower girls (Ginny Henry and Madeleine Smith) and a ring bearer (Daniel Smith). We also had three extra ushers that were very special to me. They were my little brother, David's, friends that we hung out with all the time (Josh Cook, Phil Jacobs and Andrew Kaufman).
I was Daniel and Madeleine Smith's nanny for about 4-5 months when Jason and I were first dating.
Ginny Henry and I had a special bond from my babysitting days - she even wore this fancy dress (which was hard for a tomboy) just for me.
Jason and his groomsmen had to dress in the nursery - I love this picture of Jason waiting for the ceremony to begin.
A few pictures from the wedding photo shoot.
This is one of my favorites from the entire day (except that Jason isn't in it). It was very important to me to have picture with my brothers. In typical form, they thought it would be funny to hold flowers. It makes me smile every time I see it!
Here I am being walked in by my Daddy. I'm sure the door should have been closed for this picture, but I like that you can see all the umbrellas in the foyer. It was pouring the day of our wedding. The wedding was supposed to be at 2:00 but we didn't start until 2:30 because there was a terrible wreck on the interstate - even starting late, some people only made it to the reception.
I think 'they' say flowers and food are the two biggest expenses of the wedding. Well, we didn't have many flowers - just what the girls held (which I did have an opinion to request gerberia daises) and then the candles in the front.
The reception was also very low key. The only thing I cared about was the cake. It had to be white cake with white icing (the only kind of cake I like) and I wanted it to be basket weave. Plus, I wanted Mary Flatt's spinach dip. My Aunt Carol and my Grandmother made a lot of different breads (pumpkin, nut, banana, etc.) and we had crackers with Mary's dip and some fruit. And the cake!
Our honeymoon was a little tricky because of our age. We wanted to go up in the mountains. We tried to go to Colorado, Vermont and Maine, but all three of those states require you to be 25 to rent a car. So we went to Highlands, NC instead and couldn't have asked for anything better - it even snowed our last day.
I was Daniel and Madeleine Smith's nanny for about 4-5 months when Jason and I were first dating.Ginny Henry and I had a special bond from my babysitting days - she even wore this fancy dress (which was hard for a tomboy) just for me.Jason and his groomsmen had to dress in the nursery - I love this picture of Jason waiting for the ceremony to begin.A few pictures from the wedding photo shoot.This is one of my favorites from the entire day (except that Jason isn't in it). It was very important to me to have picture with my brothers. In typical form, they thought it would be funny to hold flowers. It makes me smile every time I see it! Here I am being walked in by my Daddy. I'm sure the door should have been closed for this picture, but I like that you can see all the umbrellas in the foyer. It was pouring the day of our wedding. The wedding was supposed to be at 2:00 but we didn't start until 2:30 because there was a terrible wreck on the interstate - even starting late, some people only made it to the reception.
I think 'they' say flowers and food are the two biggest expenses of the wedding. Well, we didn't have many flowers - just what the girls held (which I did have an opinion to request gerberia daises) and then the candles in the front.The reception was also very low key. The only thing I cared about was the cake. It had to be white cake with white icing (the only kind of cake I like) and I wanted it to be basket weave. Plus, I wanted Mary Flatt's spinach dip. My Aunt Carol and my Grandmother made a lot of different breads (pumpkin, nut, banana, etc.) and we had crackers with Mary's dip and some fruit. And the cake!
Our honeymoon was a little tricky because of our age. We wanted to go up in the mountains. We tried to go to Colorado, Vermont and Maine, but all three of those states require you to be 25 to rent a car. So we went to Highlands, NC instead and couldn't have asked for anything better - it even snowed our last day.Now, 13 years later, we can say it was the best day of our lives. We had four years together before kids, five kids now, in our third (and Jason would say last) home and we are more in love now than on our wedding day.
Life is good!
I absolutely LOVE this post. What a good idea to recap everything (I may steal this in a couple months!). I LOVE LOVE your hair. So long! Our wedding was also super low key - I didn't even know what food was at the reception. My mom planned everything. I just wanted to show up and get married! And I was also 20 - we paid $80 to rent a car for 1 day on our honeymoon because neither of us were 25. Good memories!
ReplyDeleteAnniversary posts never fail to make me giggle. :) So fun.
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