celebrating eight

This week in 2005, a humongous ice storm hit Kansas.  It was a bad one, and I can't remember one that bad since.  People were without power for a handful of days.

The storm hit on Tuesday, and on Saturday, January 8, Dave and I were getting married.

I wasn't worried about the weather one bit.  I love winter anyway, and we chose to have a winter wedding, which we definitely got.  (I was only worried about people driving to our wedding)

We wondered if anyone would even come.  But if it was going to be just us and our immediate family, which we honestly thought it could possibly be, I knew it would still be perfect.

 I shared our wedding day "as it happened" on Instagram today.  It was definitely an excessive number of pictures to post in one day, and quite possibly annoyed someone.  But it was fun to remember what we were doing throughout the day, on this day in 2005.

So I'll share a little bit of our story here too, for those of you who don't follow on Instagram.

Maybe you've heard how we met.  But just in case, I'll back you up to that.

We met at the K-State Student Union, over lunch time.  I sat down in a semi-empty area of the Union to eat my Chinese food, and when I cut into my first bite my plastic fork broke, with a pretty loud snap.  It was loud enough for others to hear, so I looked up and around to see if anyone witnessed it, before I slowly got up to go get a new fork. As I stood up, I heard a voice teasingly say,
"I heard that."

And that was the beginning.  My fork broke.  The stranger next to me heard it and decided to actually comment on it.  And a year later he asked me to marry him.

January 8, 2005...

I'll start with a picture from the rehearsal dinner the night before, because it's one of the better ones I have of me and the girls, without having to scan something like I did a lot of the rest.  And yes, I know my hair is very blonde. Way too blonde for me.

 And then we said goodbye.

On our wedding day, a wonderful friend hosted a bridal party luncheon in her home for all of us.  We staggered it so the guys would be out of there before the girls showed up.
 These are all of our groomsmen and ushers.

 The ice was really bad and the church maintenance people told us there was no way they could get the front steps to the main entrance of the church cleaned off.  So they cleaned a side/back door, leaving guests having to walk through the basement of the back of the church and then up some stairs into the lobby to come into the sanctuary.  It was quite the detour.  A few of the ushers went out and tried their hardest to clear the steps so we could try to use them, but they had no luck.  It would have taken them hours and hours.  I had really really wanted to walk down these stairs and have pictures coming out of this beautiful entrance to drive away.  But it wasn't happening.  I think that's the only thing that didn't go as planned (that I know of), so in the end, no big deal.

My favorite moment of the day was seeing each other before the ceremony. I walked down the isle, in the empty sanctuary to meet him. It was just us and the photographer.  It was such a sweet sweet moment.

We had the cutest little ringbearers ever. 

 Dave knew that along with my dream of a winter wedding, I wanted to ride off in a sleigh. Me and my crazy ideas.  But it's hard to book a sleigh in advance in a place you can't predict whether there will be snow.  So I was settled on riding away in Dave's 1970 Cuda.
 Before we walked out, I even made sure to ask Dave to make sure I was able to get into the Cuda okay without falling and that my dress didn't get stuck in the door.
He gave me his assurance, and then we headed out through the candlelit crowd.

I was mostly focused on the ground, making sure to not slip on ice and hold my dress up. So when I finally did look up, I saw a horse drawn carriage waiting. It was such a fun surprise from Dave and his family, and still had the same feel that a sleigh would.
It was a 35 degree ride.  But I think the adrenaline kept us warm.  I didn't think about the cold one time.

And then we celebrated.  It's so fun thinking about all of our friends and family that were there with us that night.   Our reception was a beautiful mix of greenery, snow, ice, and white lights. With the perfect backdrop of real snow and ice out the wall of windows along one edge of the reception.

  I'm thankful to be so richly blessed with a husband who loves me beyond all of my faults.  The past 8 years I have learned so much about unconditional love.  Marriage is wonderful and hard and sweet and frustrating and so many other things, all wrapped into one relationship.  But I'm thankful that God put us together, to walk this life together, learning all along the way to not only love and serve each other, but to ultimately learn how to love and serve Him.

And to think it all began with a broken fork.