Our Wedding: The Ceremony

There is one thing I know for certain in this life--My husband loves me. It's true. By some miracle, he loves me, and every day I am in awe by it, and I love him more than I ever imagined possible. That was especially true on our wedding day. It was perfect. I could not imagine any way that it could have been any more perfect than it was. We got the wedding of our dreams.

Let me share it with you.

This picture was taken right after the First Look. As it turns out, Jim had been rushed out of our room without his jacket so I could get dressed. So he had to go back to the room quickly to get not only his jacket, but also the marriage license! Then we went inside together. Even though we were formally dressed, the whole feeling as was very relaxed and casual, which was exactly what we wanted.

Before we go any further, I wanted to share a picture of my hair and the hair piece I wore.  Can you believe I made that hair piece? I had made a larger one, but about three weeks before the wedding, I tore it apart and made a smaller one. I was so proud of it. It was simple and yet so romantic looking, and of course, it was in my favorite color...

Okay... Back to the wedding!

So here we are standing in front of the minister, Chad Baker, a true southern gentleman. At this point he was explaining to us that we need to look at each other while reciting our vows, because we're marrying each other and not him. I'm not sure he actually had to explain that, because we really didn't have eyes for anyone but each other the entire day, but especially during the vows.

See what I mean... Jim couldn't take his eyes off me, and you'll see in the next picture that the same was true for me.

I like how this picture taken in the mirror.  Can you see how much I adore my soon-to-be husband there?

You get the whole effect in this picture and you can see how perfect it truly was... The room, the tree, my dress, our expressions. Even though Chad was standing right there beside us, as far as we knew, there was no one else in the room.

Now there was a little incident with the exchanging of rings... Jim had no problem at all placing my ring on my finger. I, however, could not get his ring to go on!

Here he is putting my ring on my finger... Mine slid on my finger so easily. As a little aside, Chad gave my ring the nicest compliment, and I really liked that, because I love my rings!!

Here I am trying to put his ring on. I pushed and pushed, and it wouldn't budge over his knuckle. Then I remembered he said it had to be turned to get over his knuckle...Well, it wouldn't turn!!

After trying for what seemed forever, but was really only a few moments, I finally looked up at him and said "Help me!", which of course, he did. Actually looking back at it, the moment was symbolic of our relationship. He's always there to help me. He's my tower of strength that I can lean on and depend on.

After we exchanged rings, Chad said a few more words. He gave us some lovely advice, that when we have rough times to spin our rings to remind ourselves of that moment when we exchanged our vows and of how much we love each other.

Then...of course...came the kiss!

We were husband and wife, and I think that was probably the happiest moment ever experienced by anyone.

Did I mention how much I love my husband? I love him more deeply than I ever thought possible, and I will always remember our wedding day as the most romantic day of my life.

Our Wedding: First Look

When I was first talking to our photographer, she asked if we wanted to do a first look.  Well, honestly, I had never heard of a first look before, but it seemed pretty self-explanatory.  It sounded like a really good idea. We were only going to have one photographer, and I wasn't really going to walk down an aisle since it was just the two of us.

I absolutely loved Jim's look when he turned around to see me!

What do you think? Did he like what he saw?

Our Wedding!

The Dress

Yes, we did it!  We were married on 12/01 at 12:01!  Our day was absolutely perfect. There were a couple of snaffoos, such as the tuxedo place didn't have the right sized tux for Jim and the florist forgot to put my brooch on my bouquet, but nothing that could spoil our day.

My shoes and our rings

So do you want to hear about it? I hope so, because I'm dying to tell you all the details!!!!  Of course, I'm not going to do it all at once.  There's just too much to tell in one post!   Plus, our photographer took over 270 photos, and every single one is gorgeous!  All the pictures were taken by Jamie Weaver of Dream Weaver Photos.

Where we were married

Well, our venue was beautiful.  The Gastonian in Savannah is lovely. It's two Italianate mansions with so much atmosphere. We were going to have our ceremony in the garden, but it had been raining for several days and being December, a lot of the flowers had died. It was still beautiful, but not as pretty as it would have been in the summer.  So instead we were married in front of the fireplace, by the Christmas tree, in the parlor.

The Gastonian, Savannah, Georgia

I wish we had taken a picture of some of the staff at The Gastonian, because they were fantastic. The Gastonian has a great elopement package which includes the venue, minister, flowers, cake, champagne toast, two nights stay, and turn down service including rose petals and chocolate covered strawberries.  Everyone was so accommodating, basically anything we needed, they took care of for us.

Our cake and my bouquet

We selected a red velvet cake, which is a southern tradition. I would have chosen cream cheese filling, but Jim wanted vanilla buttercream.  They say marriage is a compromise, so I had to let him have something he wanted! After all, he would have been perfectly happy getting married at the courthouse here in Muskegon!!!  I'm so glad we didn't go that route! Savannah was so much more romantic!

Well, I guess that's enough for today.  You really didn't expect me to tell you everything today did you???? But here's a picture of us. I would NOT dream of leaving you without a picture of the happy couple!

Happily married!