My Wedding

My gosh, don't we look young? And looking back, you can totally tell that I did my own hair. Why didn't somebody offer to help a girl out? Anyway, this is the photo in front of "the tree." This tree, an olive tree I believe, was ripped out when that freak tornado blew through downtown in August of 1999, so I love that we have our picture in front of it.

Let's see, what to tell you about my wedding day? Well, for starters, Matt was late to the temple. That freaked me out a bit; but not as much as it freaked my parents out, I think. We were married on June 19, 1997 in the Salt Lake Temple. It was really hot (June, go figure) so most of our photos show me squinting and sweating. One interesting fact, when I experience even the slightest rise in temperature, I sweat like a gut-shot hog. Not a pretty sight. Which is why I hate the fact that evidently all of the women in my ward have poor circulation and they keep the Relief Society Room at greenhouse temperature. I swear, I don't have any horrendous sin to confess, I'm just hot, dang it.

But I digress.....

Our sealing was performed by Robert Rice (the Rice-Eccles Stadium guy.) He did a really great job. The one piece of advice that I remember him giving us was that it was not okay for either of us to give less than 100%. That is great advice, and I'm sad to say that it hasn't always been easy to keep that up, but we try. As part of our ceremony, he asked Matt and I to share with our friends and family what first attracted us to each other. Like the big dorks that we are, Matt's response was "that she was smart" and my response was "that he was nice." You know, we are dorks, but those two traits can't be easily taught, so thank heavens they came hard-wired in us.

We had lots of friends and family who supported us on that day. After photos at the temple, we went through the drive-thru at McDonald's for a drink (I told you I had a deep-seated addiction.) We had our wedding breakfast, catered by my in-laws at a church in Matt's stake. It was nice.

Our reception that afternoon was held at West Ridge Golf Course. There was actually some reluctance about having some place other than the church (didn't want to look snooty), but they wouldn't reschedule Cub Scouts, so what were we to do? My dad was ticked! Anyway, we invited tons of people (man, we were a bit pretentious, but we didn't want to leave anyone out and we were the first in both of our families to get married, etc...)

I have really fond memories of my wedding day. I had loved Matt for so long that it was awesome to finally make it official. In fact, I distinctly remember thinking that our day could have ended after the temple and it would have been okay.

We had a Disney-themed reception... what else? We had Disney snowglobes on all the tables and the music was all Disney.

Our cake bit the dust. We had originally intended to have a four-tiered cake with flowers, but one bump during the set-up and all we heard was "OHHHHH SHIT!!!!!!!" coming from my mom's friend Myrna, the cake-maker. I think everyone thought I was going to freak out, but what could I have done? Nothing. At least we weren't serving cake as a refreshment.

I loved seeing everyone at the wedding. As I think back on it now, and look back at photos, it was such a great occasion. It certainly wasn't the fanciest wedding, but it was fun and I remember it fondly.

We spent our first night as a married couple at Little America, and flew out the next morning to Disney World for our Honeymoon.

As we get ready to celebrate 14 years of marriage, I can honestly say that I am married to my best friend and that we are still laughing and enjoying each other's company after all this time.

And a note to those of you who are still looking for that special someone, heed my words of wisdom....

"Beauty fades, but stupid stays."