17 Years Ago Today...

• I had to send a message to the groom's changing room to warn Jeff not to put my wedding ring all the way on my ring finger. I'd accidentally snipped it open in the early hours while finishing up my wedding flower arrangements. It was a gusher. Lovely.
• The reason I'd done my own flowers was because my very talented florist, who was also one of my bridesmaids, had just had a baby 6 weeks earlier and that baby had a frightening allergic reaction to her formula that evening which involved a trip to the ER.
• Thankfully, her baby recovered just fine on her new formula. However, this bridesmaid's mother had made her dress months in advance of the wedding. A dress which beautiful but a size too small in the bust post-baby, and required emergency last minute alterations (literally sewing her into the dress and praying that it held up during the ceremony).
• Have I ever mentioned before here the whole 'meet everyone' BBQ for the families of the Bride and Groom which took place a couple of days before our wedding? A neighbors goat followed my sister-in-laws back from a walk down my mom's country lane, and was mingling with the guests in my mom's yard for who knows how long before my sister noticed something was amiss and hauled the beast back down the street to it's home.
• The goat got out a second time and came back to the party (a true party animal, lol)...at which point it walked up the deck steps, and right into my mom's kitchen. My mom was just pulling a big veggie platter out of the fridge when she saw the goat, shrieked, dropped the veggie platter, and cauliflower, cherry tomatoes and olives went rolling across the floor. The goat had the audacity to take some for the road before being chased out of the kitchen by shrieking women, lol. My sister, bless her heart, hauled the goat back to it's pasture again and made some much needed repairs on the neighbors fence to ensure he wouldn't be back.
• We very nearly found out the hard way that there is a weight limit for second story decks. Our guests had to be asked to stay off the deck on one side of the house because it had began to shimmy under all the weight.
• I was running on about 2 hours of sleep for my big day.
• The ceremony went off without a hitch. Not counting our getting hitched, that is.
• There was an uninvited guest in attendance. One day I'll have to post the clip from the video my uncle took in the reception hall, where this person was skulking around amongst the guests in filthy, straight-from-work clothing.
• Our wedding photographer was very short. I have nothing against short people, but this was an important detail that none of the wedding planning books ever mentioned. Most of the photographs he took look up everyone's noses. From our photographers vantage point, the pews were visible in most every shot, as were the knees of the pastor who was watching the whole proceeding in the front row.
• We bought only the book of proofs, which had the photography logo stamped larger than life in the corner of each photo and came with a pre-printed note that contained legalese which warned against making copies of his copyrighted photos.
• The photo in this post was taken on a disposable 35 millimeter camera by my mother-in-law as we finished up the wedding photos, and is probably my favorite one of the entire day, even if my bangs were a bit short.
• Somehow, all the disposable cameras we purchased for tables at the reception were left in a box in my changing room. Which actually turned out to be a good thing, because we were poor college students at the time, and I probably wouldn't have otherwise had any photos of our first year to scrapbook without them.
• A dear lady I used to babysit for in high school had offered to make the cake as our gift, knowing we were on a shoestring budget. She was 7 1/2 months pregnant at the time, and was ordered to bedrest a couple of days before our wedding. She said she could still decorate it, but we'd have to do the baking.
• Jeff and I baked our own wedding cake (with her pans) the largest pan of which barely fit in my moms oven. The oven door had to remain open slightly, which drastically increased the baking time. It took all day long. Months later, I learned that my sister (the same one who wrangled the goat back to it's home) and who was something of a nanny for that same family by this time, had actually done the honors.
• Our ringbearer, who was about 3 at the time, heard that they were supposed to throw rice on the bride...and hurled the whole decorative bag of it at my face moments before we got into our getaway car.
• Much to Jeff's dismay, I fell asleep on the ferry which took us to our honeymoon on Vashon Island.
• The kind proprietess of our Bed & Breakfast heard we were college kids and gave us a huge discount on her usual rates. We returned for our 10th anniversary, and she remembered us and again gave us a discount.

• Though the fiasco was all very real and somewhat stressful then, we've long since been able to look back on all that and laaaaaugh. It definitely made for a memorable day.
• The best part of all, however...I married my best friend.

I ♥ you, Jeff!!!