Jared and I planned our entire wedding together. I hear so many women that hated planning their wedding, because it was so stressful. I did have a hard time trying to please everyone, but all in all it was a great experience. Before we did any type of wedding planning, we sat down and thought what theme should we have. We thought having a theme would make the rest of the wedding planning outlined. Instead of just picking our favorites of everything. We really struggled with our wedding theme, because we felt like we were just picking it out of the blue.However, I have a weakness. Big Fish. The movie, if you’ve read my blog for more than 3 minutes you know that already. The night we got engaged Jared had snuck Big Fish into the suitcase, and we watched it in our hotel. Even on Valentines day, Jared will make sure Big Fish is playing when I get home. That movie means more to me than I can explain. Some people have role models, I have a role movie. So with that said, we both agreed on Big Fish for our wedding theme. Planning our wedding was one of the most fun times of my life. It actually set up a lot of really good habits for our marriage. We would email all day long about things we needed to get done, and who was in charge of what, and when we needed to meet. I actually don’t remember one argument that we had during our wedding planning. We definitely had different ideas on things, but they were solved very quickly.
Last year on August 26th, Jared and I got married. We decided to have a 2 day wedding to mesh our idea of a small intimate ceremony with our parents’ ideas of celebrating with our entire families and friends. Our small intimate ceremony was held on Friday, followed by a catered dinner under the stars. Saturday our friends all came up and we danced, toasted, we ate cake, took photos and the whole 9 yards.
Friday night before the ceremony I remember still feeling so matter-of-fact. I had a checklist of what needed to be done, by when, and I had something scheduled for everyone to be doing, setting up tables and chairs, getting the music ready, and all the small things. So when it came time to get ready, I didn’t even know where Jared was. I just went into my section of the cabin and started to get dressed with all the ladies. My best friend in the world was stuck in traffic, and I made my dad hold the wedding to wait for her, because I couldn’t imagine getting married without her by my side. As we were waiting everyone was taking their seats, and the boys were gallivanting about, and the girls were destressing. I was all alone for the first time in what felt like months, and it was the first time I actually had to reflect. There was this hidden balcony that was sitting on, completely done up, in my wedding dress and for the first time I started to tear up. I saw Jared through a window, and he couldn’t see me, but I just watched him for a minute. I think he was watching TV or something, but I just studied him. I never had nerves or cold feet, just pure gratitude. I thought about the day we got engaged, I thought about all the horrible experience we’d been through that brought us so close together and I just reflected on our entire existence as a couple. I heard Ellen walk in the door, and knew that meant the wedding was ready to start. She was there, and my groom was waiting for me. Everything was perfect. It was even overcast, my favorite type of weather, and it was just the most beautiful day I could imagine. I thought about how scared I would be to walk toward Jared in front of everyone, and knew it would be hard for me to say my vows (we wrote our own) but once I was actually headed toward Jared, I had tunnel vision, I wanted to run instead of walk. I didn’t even see anyone else, except for Jared.
Before I knew it, we said I do, and bam! we were officially married.I want to end this anniversary week by sharing with you our vows.Jared’s are short and sweet.Mine are a novel, because that’s what I do, I write.I went first:
Jared went last.
Happy Anniversary Jared (on Sunday).I still love you always.
