Wedding

So my friend Hannah posted about her wedding for this Blog Hop, and I have been thinking about our wedding a lot lately, as our sixth anniversary is coming up, so I figured I'd do it. It's not technically about Anthony, sure, but he was there (as a gleam in his father's eye) and besides - this blog is about him but I do all the typing, so what the heck?


I feel like Sophia in The Golden Girls - Picture it! July 31, 2004!

I am choosing this picture because it shows my flowers well (they were red roses) but also because I was annoyed with the photographer and I think it shows, here. It was hot and I was kind of over him and his goofy photo assignments. Anyways. We did pictures at the Canal, which I have always loved and where Mike and I took a lot of walks, back when we weren't with anyone who might jump in at a minute's notice. :) I loved my dress - I found it for $700 at a store in Indianapolis, and I told my sister the designer and model number and she found it at the now-defunct bridesave.com for $189, plus $10 shipping. Crazy, right? It was really beautiful. I should have had it altered, just a little - it was a little long and a skoshe big in the shoulders, which actually must mean it was originally designed for a football player, ha!

This is the back of my niece, Moira, and my nephews, Parker and Aidan.  It is so crazy to me that this is just six years ago, they look like little kids here and now they are not.  Parker is 18!  We had our nieces and nephews as our wedding party, which I really loved. We also had our nephew Jared and our niece Hillary, but I can't find a picture of all five. Blogger is being *very* strange about my pictures, I can't edit some of them, which is super annoying. But anyway, they were little kids then too and now are practically full grown adults.

This is our church.  We live right near it and it's especially important to us because Mike was baptized and made four other sacraments here in the months before we got married.  It's a beautiful church and we were so happy to be married here.  We got married at 6:30 in the evening and had the reception immediately following.  We did all the pictures before, which I would totally do again.  Mike and I walked out the door of the church and into the limo to go to the reception.  Mike had secretly gotten a bottle of Dom and we drank that - we were so close to the reception that we had to have the driver go around the block again so we could finish the champagne!  Our reception was at the Athletic Club - it was a great place to have a party, but it closed the October after we got married.  I can't even say what I would have done had they up and closed before our wedding reception, I'm just glad it didn't happen.

Here we are, in the church, at the Virgin Mary statue.  When I used to go to weddings and they would do the prayers to the Virgin Mary, I have to be honest - I would think "BORING!", but I'm glad we did it.  We just had the organist play the Ave Maria, instead of having someone sing it.  Or worse yet, sing something like "Hail Mary, Gentle Woman", which makes me want to vomit.  Speaking of vomit, I swear I almost got sick right when I was having my hair done the morning of the wedding.  I had gone for a nice walk with my friend Diana, who was in town from LA for the wedding.  I had made all the flowers, everything was FINE, but I started FLIPPING OUT at the hairdresser.  I called Mike and cried about it and then Laura and I went to the hotel and poof! I was better.  It was the most nervous I was all day and I guess I just had to get it out of my system?  Maybe? 

We took dance lessons, which I also recommend.  It was such a fun thing to do, and it was our fun Thursday thing, where we didn't have to think too much about the wedding, just the fun of it.  We danced a rumba to "You Send Me" by Sam Cooke.  When we started dancing and it was obvious we were really dancing, people started hooting and hollering - I remember being so surprised, it never occurred to me that it would look good!  Ha! 

We had the best time, although it's true - I really can hardly remember any of it.  I remember that when we got back to the hotel and I took off my stockings, they were ripped up like a dog had been chewing on them, on the feet.  I guess that's a sign of a good time!  My family all came in from NJ and it was - well, obviously it was special that they all came in, but it was also just like old times.

And this was funny - my friend Angie (who didn't come to my wedding and I always remember how old her son Sam is because he was born either right before or right after we got married) told me to look at everyone going up the aisle.  She said to really look at everyone, because they would be smiling at me in a way that I had never seen.  I thought it sounded like a good idea, so my Dad and I walked in the church and I took a deep breath, and smiled at the first people I saw, my cousins Patti and Kim.  And it's true, they were smiling at me in a way I had never seen ANYBODY look at me.  It was WAAAAAY too much for me, though, and I started to cry and I thought HOO BOY this is going to be bad if I keep doing this, I JUST got here!  So I didn't look at anybody else. 

All in all, I recommend marriage.  I feel very lucky to be married to Anthony's father - I mean, really beyond lucky, I feel like God himself made Mike for me, for us.  But on July 31, 2005, I had NO idea what we were in for!