Me Finding Myself: 8 years ago...

(I realize that I never finished updating my vacation pictures here... I'll get back to them eventually :)

Anyway - today is my 8 year wedding anniversary, and I just wanted to take the time to reflect back on that beautiful day 8 years ago.

It's was an absolutely gorgeous day - sunny and 70 degrees. I couldn't have asked for better wedding weather!

We were married exactly 11 days after 9/11. And when it first happened, I thought about postponing the wedding, but then thought it would be better to just go on with it - while it was an emotional time, we weren't personally affected by a loss in either family. There were a few people who didn't make it because they weren't willing to fly at that time (luckily air traffic was flowing again by then, but just barely!)

My gift to my bridesmaids was to pay for their hair and makeup to be done along with mine at a salon. This then lead to a near disastrous situation, which my maid of honor (who is still one of my best friends) will never let herself forget. As she was helping me put on my dress, part of the skirt toppled back and into her face (which was freshly made-up) and left a couple 'kisses'. We were already running a few minutes late, and were trying to think of what to do to get the lipstick off the dress - but didn't want to try some of the crazy ideas that came from the salon (spraying it with hairspray)... and voila, my other bridesmaid pulled a Shout Wipe out of her purse... and it worked! I had a hard time finding where the kisses were!! But, what's a wedding without some drama, right!?

What did Dave do during the hours in the morning before the wedding? Cut the grass at our house (which I hadn't moved into yet), hang the new kitchen cabinets, put up some moulding - and then went to Blimpie's for a sub with his groomsmen before heading over to the reception hall.

The ceremony was in the reception hall - and went much faster than I thought it would. Then we were off to take pictures. While I was happy with the photography work that we had seen - it all went down hill as the day went on with our photographer. We went to Morton Arboretum for pictures... and he proceeded to get us lost trying to find the spot he wanted to go - and taking us into an area that was mosquito central. So, we had to pay to get most of the photos retouched to remove all the big red welts that were on everyone's arms! (All photos in this blog post are courtesy of Val, my Maid of Honor - none of these shots were from our 'actual' photographer.)

Then dinner... the whole reason that we chose the reception hall in the first place... the BEST wedding dinner ever, in my opinion! Followed by an amazing cake!!

Then there was the party! We had to do the Father of the Bride/Mother of the Groom dance twice because the photographer's camera didn't work the first time around (what?!?). We got Ed to dance, and Melissa danced with my Grampa (who was 91 at the time).