Nineteen Years Ago Today …

… I married the love of my life.

Kevin and I got married in a small, pretty church in Nixa, Missouri. Even though we were not members of the church, we picked the church because a coworker of mine suggested it; I found it attractive, easily accessible and fell in love with the lovely stained-glass windows behind the pulpit.

Our wedding day arrived and though we were nervous, we weren’t OVERLY nervous. We had lived together for two years prior to our wedding so we were comfortable enough with each other that it really never occurred to us to BE that nervous.

We were more concerned with getting the ceremony over with and traveling to Cozumel, Mexico for our honeymoon. 🙂

(Hence the hurry-up-and-take-the-picture smiles on our faces).

Our wedding was small – there were only about 75 people there – and it certainly wasn’t fancy; we used my student loan money to pay for it. We cut a lot of corners – my mom made my wedding dress (thank you mom!) and we toasted each other with peach paper cups, but we didn’t care. We had agreed that it was more important to us to use what money we had to pay for our honeymoon and even though our wedding was important to us, it was really only a formality at that point – we had already made a commitment to each other long before THE day.

We did splurge on the cake though. I went to a cake lady a friend recommended and I had so much fun talking to her about what I wanted. My colors were peach and white, which is really odd considering I had never liked peach up until that point and in fact, have not really liked peach from that point on, but everything was peach for my wedding.

I used to be REALLY big into Precious Moments figurines so it seemed natural to have the wedding figurine for my cake topper.

The entire reception is still only a blur to me. I remember the ceremony quite clearly (probably because Kevin and I made funny faces at each other the entire ceremony and silently wondered if the music we had selected would EVER end so we could continue the ceremony), but the reception, not so much.

I do remember being extremely nervous though. There was my family, his family and some of our co-workers so I felt like I had to be three different people all at the same time.

And I wasp pretty nervous when it came time to cut the cake and toast each other. I had given Kevin specific instructions NOT to smash cake into my face and of course, I resisted the urge to smash cake into his face.

But only just barely. 😀

In fact, now that I think about it, the bite that Kevin fed me is the ONLY piece of my wedding cake that I ate that day. (I was too nervous to eat).

We did end up saving the top layer of our cake to eat on our first anniversary. We have a video of us trying it and then promptly gagging and laughing our heads off because it was so dry it was like eating sawdust.

This is one of my favorite pictures from that day:

This picture was not posed, the photographer just had the presence of mind to capture it. This is my oldest niece (she’s married now). I was very nervous about trying to fit in with my new family and I just adored this little girl so much that I had to tease her and make her smile.

It’s been a long, bumpy 19 years … but it’s also been the best 19 years of my life.

Thank you for being so patient with me, Kevin. Thank you for being stubborn and not giving up, even when I was ready to. Thank you for being my husband. Thank you for being in my life.

I love you.