With the parents.
With my family.
With my parents.
With my siblings.
Announcing Mr. & Mrs. Jones!
Our first dance.
Dancing with Daddy.
The cake!
Birdseed.
The get-away.
Our "backyard" the next day.
So I've decided that my name should be changed to Obafemi. God is just so good to me. This is a sampling of the story of my last few weeks.
Wedding prep:
- God brought the greatest guy into my life. The one guy who is completely perfect for me. And he's hot too. :) Here's that story.
- Thursday, nine days before the wedding, I got a call from our photography company. The photographer we'd chosen had a death in his family and would be out of town for the next two weeks (including the day of our wedding). The regional manager assured me that his replacement was her top guy. I was starting to get a little antsy when she told me the replacement photographer's name: Scott Tribble. That's right the photographer at the wedding of two die-hard trekkers who come from families of trekkers and many of whose friends (and attendants) are trekkers had a photographer whose last name was tribble. That settled me down considerably.
- Everything that needed to get done got done in time, maybe not the way we'd planned, but it was done and everything looked great.
- The Wednesday before the wedding, one of my friends mentioned that the RAs (the boys' missions group at the church) were having their Crazy Night in the fellowship hall (the location of the rehearsal dinner and reception) the night before the wedding. We knew we could find someplace else for the rehearsal dinner, but any decorations we put up in the fellowship hall would be at risk from a large number of rambunctious boys and many dodge balls. After learning of the double-booking, then RAs graciously offered to move their activity to an alternate location. (We thanked the boys with some treats last night.)
- The juice for the "Baptist Champagne" (white grape juice and Sprite), which could have been very expensive "just happened" to be on sale the day we bought it.
Wedding Day:
- All of the last-minute things got done!
- My brother and dad, both of whom had purchased suits for the occasion (along with the rest of the guys in the wedding party) realized that, while they'd picked up their rental tie, vest, and shirt, they had failed to pick up the actual suits. But since we'd done it all at Men's Warehouse, and since they had left their suits at the store (and not at home or something), they were able to just go to our local store and pick up two more.
- The flowers weren't at all what I was expecting. They were everything I'd asked for, but not at all what I expected. All the same, they were absolutely beautiful.
- The choir and orchestra (and my brother who was singing) all worked out beautifully. At one point, there was some miscommunication between JediTagger and the other musicians, so he started singing the chorus while they played the verse. He caught himself after a few words and played it off very well. Unfortunately, by then the director had noticed, so he was instructing the musicians to play the chorus. It was a few measures before they got it all together, but, other than the few words of the chorus that my brother sang instead of the second verse, I didn't notice at all. But other than that one tiny moment, all of the music was perfect and just like I'd always imagined.
- The cake, which, like the flowers, was largely left to the creativity of the designer, was both beautiful and excellent. The "hanging stars" idea was perfect, and the groom's cake with our invitation on it was amazing!
- The SNOW!!! I have witnesses of me saying weeks in advance, in the middle of our unusual 60° weather, that there would be snow for my wedding. Well, even I was a "little" surprised with the outcome. If the snow had started even a few hours sooner, it could have beendisastrouss, but it didn't. There were flurries all morning, but not enough to discourage most people from coming. By the end, the ground was nicely covered and gave us an excuse to leave the party a little early (ok, not really, but it's more fun to tell the story that way). Well, it snowed all night and into the next day. Most of Maryland got ~14 inches. Columbia (where VNB - Very Nice Beloved now, btw - and I live) got 21 inches. Laurel, maybe 10 miles away got 14. We got 21. When asked why that happened, a friend of mine replied " Because that's where
Post-Wedding:
- VNB, ever since he got his SUV with 4WD, has said that the next time there was a big snow, he'd help hospitals get their staffs into work. Well, the first big snow in our area occurred on our wedding night. The next morning when we woke up, we looked out the window to see the total accumulation. Well, not only did we get 21 inches of perfect snow, our parking lot also got a 50 ft pine tree. It found the only two empty spots across which to fall and only blocked in the cars of one building - ours. In the Treover community in which we live, God used a "tree over" in the parking lot to make sure that VNB had absolutely no way to leave, allowing him to stay home with his new bride without any guilt. The tree was gone in plenty of time for us to leave for our honeymoon.
- I'd been slightly uneasy since I'd realized that the day after our wedding was "International Sunday" at church. The choir was singing a song that I liked and it was just a theme that I really wanted to participate in....but the snow helped with that too. :) Not only were services cancelled that day, but so was the Cake Auction - where VNB and I had our first conversation the year before. I was sad that we'd miss it. But it's been postponed (as has "International Sunday," I'd assume), so we'll get to participate in both! The choir and others who attended the wedding also have said that they really felt like they'd already worshiped at the wedding, so it was ok to not have services on Sunday.
- Our honeymoon was absolutely perfect. We had a "little cabin in the woods" in theShenandoahh Valley. It was amazing. We stopped by Luray Caverns along the way, saw Monticello, Ash Lawn-Highlands, and Montpelier (the homes of Presidents Jefferson, Munroe, and Madison, respectively), and ate at a Japanese steakhouse.
- And lastly, now I have a husband who is "more than I could ever ask or imagine" and a home that's on its way to being ordered and is already beautiful and warm.
Basically, everything is perfect, and I'm so blessed that I don't even know how to explain it all other than to say, "Obafemi" (God loves me)!
You're probably asking right now why I get everything I want and why He blesses me so much. Well, I've asked myself the same thing many times. The only answer I can come up with is this gem of wisdom:
I have absolutely no idea.
