Our Wedding Day

I'm participating in the Completing Him Challenge from Courtney's Women Living Well blog. I seem to be a week behind on each challenge (VBS last week...does that explain it?), but at least I'm trying to work on it, right? She asked us to tell our Wedding Story this week, so here it is.

The Date: Saturday, May 27, 1995 (just 2 days after we finished teaching school for the year)

The Place: Rose Hill Baptist Church, Texarkana, Texas

The Time: 3:30 pm

We had a wonderful day and everything went great! I loved having all of my relatives from Illinois and Eric's family from Florida with us and a bunch of my life-long friends from high school & college.

I remember my friend, Ashli, coming and offering to get us all some lunch since we were hungry & stuck at the church getting ready. She's so sweet!

One of my favorite things was all of the music we had in our wedding. I LOVED having the handbells play one of my favorite songs, Pachelbel's Canon. It was special to us because we were both in the handbell choir. I also loved having some of our friends singing "Seekers of Your Heart."

I love this picture of us lighting the unity candle & holding hands. I don't know why the picture is so tiny though. :(

Here we are sharing our vows. I was so nervous...I still do NOT like being in front of people...makes me VERY nervous! My goal for the day was to make it through without crying.

Our wedding party...

Bridesmaids: Rosemary (friend from college & taught together...helped get us together), Deena (OBU college roommate), Pam (friend from high school), Allison (friend from Memphis while I was in graduate school), Jeni (my cousin from Illinois), and junior bridesmaid was Sondra, flower girls were my niece, Mauri, and a friend's daughter, Christiana

Groomsmen: Eric's friends from college, Gart & Rick, my brother, Kevin, my brother-in-law, David, and our friend, James Henry (Rosemary's husband that helped set us up), and ring bearer, Ethan

Here are my relatives from my mom's side of the family...most of them from Illinois

OK, this is a little page out of my scrapbook that I just had to show...Eric getting the garter off of my leg...SOOOO embarrassing once again. And then little sweet Mauri telling me goodbye...I can't believe she's 18 now! How times flies!

We had a lovely reception at the church & then got ready to leave. Eric's friends decided to "pay him back" for his little pranks at their weddings. They created a yarn web across the steps of the church leading out to the car, so we had to cut our way out!

Remember, my goal was to NOT cry! Well, I made it UNTIL Eric dragged me down the stairs & I FELL! Right there in front of EVERYONE as they were throwing the bird seed & he was cutting the yarn! I was SOOOOO embarrassed & all of those pinned-up emotions just fell out when I hit the steps! All I wanted to do was GET IN THE CAR & GET OUT OF THERE! You could have heard a pin drop when I fell! Right after, I was asking if anyone got it on tape because I just knew we could win $10,000 on AFV! But of course no one got it on video. :(

And do you see Deena walking behind us with MY purse on HER shoulder? In all of the confusion from the fall, she still had my purse when we drove off (and this was BEFORE cell phones). We realized it when we stopped at a car wash on the other side of town. So we turned around & went back to the church. In the mean time, she took off down the interstate looking for us. Then, we had to go back to my house & finally caught back up with her. It was ok because we got to tell everyone good bye again. Those are always the funny stories to remember anyway. :)

So there are a few memories from our wedding day...what a special day to always remember! What a blessing God gave me with my very best friend! I just love him so much!