19 years ago today...

...I got married. The wedding was in a Mormon church in Los Angeles even though neither my husband and I were Mormons. My husband had no best man and my sister in law was my maid of honor. The caterers of my wedding were my teacher's aide's parents and they catered my wedding for free although they were an hour late because their daughter, my aide and good friend ran off and eloped on the same day as my wedding. My mother in law, afraid we'd end up with no food to serve to our guests, ran out and bought a bunch of bread, cold cuts and condiments! Fortunately the caterers arrived with some wonderful authentic Mexican food and the reception went smoothly.

Two weeks later we got married again, this time my sister was my maid of honor and my dad was my husband's best man. I wore the same dress. We wanted two weddings because it was too expensive to fly either the Michigan family and friends to L.A., or the L.A. people to Michigan. At the second wedding my dad's shoes for his tuxedo were marked size 9 but were actually a six. He swore he could squeeze into them but we sent my brother to the tux shop to get new shoes. Consequently he's not in the wedding pictures we took before the ceremony. We drove to the reception in a Model A car (seen below) at my parent's farm. The reception was under a big tent we'd put up the day before. After installing the tent my husband was playing frisbee and fell into a ditch and pulled a muscle which caused him to nearly limp back down the aisle of the church after the ceremony. I know that a lot of couples want the perfect wedding but, believe me, it's the imperfect things that you remember and love 19 years down the road.

Here's my husband, Mark and I, thanks for reading.