An Overdue Remembery

I must applaud my photography clients for their out-of-this-world support of my wedding photography with their quick development and amazing advertising. My pictures from other weddings have been sent around the world and back before I myself have even *looked* at my pictures from October 9, 2005.

Yes, that was 2005.

Yes, we are now in 2007.

Yes, I JUST finished looking through all of my wedding pictures. You can thank the flu virus that took me out on Friday and gave me a rather pulled stomach muscle. Or two. Or ten. I don't know. I'm having issues with the whole sitting up thing. It's actually embarrassing.

But the point of this post is not my aching stomach muscles. It is a remembery that is long overdue.

I promised at one point around a year and a half ago that I would share more from my memories of my wedding day. It seems like Valentine's Week should actually present a reasonable opportunity to share.

On my wedding day, October 9, 2005, I was a rather scared bride. I was a scared bride who had called her groom two days before the wedding to tell him she wasn't ready to be a wife. My groom, as evidenced by the ensuing wedding, bore up well under the pressure and we got married.

I was afraid to look through my wedding pictures, because I knew how much I was hiding inside myself. I was hurting and stressed and at the point of not caring about anything but getting it all over with. I just wanted to be alone with Pete. I needed us to be okay again, to be us again. So I made up my mind to just get through the day.

For the first year or so of our marriage, I was so ashamed of that attitude. I had had so many dreams about getting married, and I had a wonderful husband and a beautiful wedding and everybody else loved my hair, even if I didn't think it looked like me! God (and Pete) just kept working gently past the shame that I was struggling with to remind me that I was just me on my wedding day, scared, a bit fake at points, and very, very human. All the time I tried to get away from it, they just loved me anyway, where I was.

(I have an awesome God and an awesome husband. I decided last week that I must have fallen in love with Pete because he is so much like the God I fell in love with...)

So after all of this time, I remember some things about our wedding that I will always cherish, things beyond the shame, things that are my special memories.

*I remember that Pete was happy. He was so nervous until he saw me, and then he was just in love. God gave him the desire of his heart in me.

*I remember our first dance, to Mark Schultz's "Time of My Life." Pete, that really is our song. Someday, I know I'm going to be standing in that attic with one of my however-many wedding dresses it turned out to be, and you'll still be having the time of your life, and I'll still be totally amazed that you could love me. Thank you for being in love with me in the moments, not just for the rest of our lives.

*I remember that we would NOT have smashed the cake into each other's faces. (More on that in another remembery this week.)

*I remember the tears on Pete's face when I sang the song to him that I had written for him.

*I remember my dad's song, "The Majesty and Glory of Your Name," in which I connected with my own wedding, and realized that God was there, that He had done it, and that I could worship Him and give Him my heart and my life and He was going to be faithful to Pete and me. Alleluia.

*I remember showing everyone my grandmother's diamonds on my left hand, wishing she could be there, wanting them to know how much I missed her.

*I remember the repeated Virginia Reels and the laughter and the lights going out and the cold and the cream puffs on the way out the door to the car and Pete's mom decorating our car and getting in the car and driving away and looking at each other, asking Pete what in the world we had just done.

Most of all, I just remember God's faithfulness. I remember the love of so many people around us, people we've barely had time to thank in the craziness that has been our life. Maybe we'll never have time to thank them until we have forever. I guess that's part of life and how it happens. But what they all gave me was beyond measure. The love that God gave me in Pete was so far outside of anything I ever expected or dreamed or really even knew to hope for. I am more amazed every time I think about it.

I don't know how Valentine's-ey that sounds, but this is my first remembery of love for the week. I figure it doesn't ALL have to be mush, right?

So, click on the picture above to see some of my favorite wedding pictures. The very good ones were taken by our wedding photographer, Bob Updegrove. I narrowed his 800 or so shots to about 50. There are a few random self-portraits of me playing dress-up the week of the wedding, and a few other random shots taken by our friend Laura Molzon.