Still Floating

It's been over 48 hours since the wedding and I'm still glowing with warm fuzzy feelings about what a wonderful time we had. I just keep thinking about our guests and how they were so loving and everyone was beaming and happy.

I felt so beautiful. Truly I felt like a princess. My dress was so beautiful and I didn't feel a bit fat in it. Even looking at the pictures. Usually I look at pictures of myself and just feel sick inside at how I look. I was actually dreading seeing myself. But no. I just want to keep talking about it with people who were there, and remembering how beautiful everything was.

Here we were back in 1986.

Our boys asked us to pose in the same way so they could get a new photo. Don't we look happy?


I guess what I'm doing is comparing in my mind to our first wedding. The difference is enormous. Our first wedding we were so young, not teenagers, but still we were young. I was pregnant and we felt pressure (from ourselves) to get married, so our child wouldn't be born out of wedlock. It just feels like we did it all wrong. We weren't even going to have a wedding, but dh's mom was pretty insistent, she really wanted us to have a wedding. I remember her saying it was the only wedding we'd ever have, so we shouldn't pass up the opportunity.

So we went ahead and planned a tiny wedding. I'm pretty sure we threw it together in less than a week. MIL offered me her wedding dress and dh wore her husband's suit that he wore when they got married. I think maybe 10 or 15 family members were present. It was at a small wedding chapel. We went to dinner afterward with dh's mom and stepfather. I didn't really want to have a wedding, but we did it because we thought it was the right thing to do.

The honeymoon was disastrous. I won't go into details, but it was not a happy experience. I was hoping for a chance this time around to make happy memories to override those bad ones. We had such a nice time on our honeymoon this time, it was very healing.

This time, we didn't have to get married. We wanted to get married to honor God. We wanted our friends and family to be able to share in the experience. I was so surprised and honored that so many people said they would attend, and then they actually showed up.

It was like a dream walking into the room, all the faces looking at me, smiling and beaming. I was a little scared at first, but I remember putting on a smile and beginning to feel very happy and emotional. I was so pleased that MIL was so responsive to the rose that I had ds1 give to her. She seemed like she almost swooned she was so happy with it. That just makes me so happy to have made her so happy.

My favorite part of all was the receiving line. The hugs. The love. The compliments. The well wishes. The hugs. Did I say the hugs? It was so wonderful to be able to greet each person and thank them for coming and sharing in our very special day.

I truly felt like a princess and much of the credit for that goes to my good friend Rees for doing my hair and makeup and nails. I felt beautiful and spectacular.

And The Very Thought of You keeps going through my head. MIL says the movie she remembers it from is Forever Young with Mel Gibson. I ordered it today from Half.com.

Well, I should get into bed.

Until next time.