Happy Anniversary to Us!

I remember bits and pieces of my wedding well.  I must say I learned a lot about planning a wedding.  It was a time before wedding planners, manicures, facials and designer dresses.  The big tip in those days was to practice your makeup before you did it on your wedding day.  I probably should have figured that that meant you didn't get your hair cut on your wedding day. Oh well!

I had $1000 to spend.  That included my dress, all facility rentals, all my family's tuxes, dresses and other attire.  It also included the  photographer, the preacher, the reception, the cake and the flowers.  Even in 1979, this was a challenge.

As I've stated before I only had 20 minutes to get dressed. Couldn't find my contact lenses...went through the wedding and receiption in a blurry haze.Important tip: if you make your own dress and don't have your contact lenses; bustling the train is VERY important. Otherwise (believe it or not) people will actually walk across your train like it is the short cut to the winning lottery ticket! Another lesson learned!

Our wedding was in the War Memorial Chapel at Va. Tech on graduation day. By the way, fun factoid--my great uncle was one of the architects in the building of the chapel.  The relief sculpture behind us is called the "Gift of Life".

There was only one baker in town.  It never occurred to me to taste the cake.  It should have.  Lesson learned.  I can't remember if there was more than one florist, but I didn't have a car, so everything had to be in walking distance.  We chose to have floral arrangements with candles so that we could carry them to the reception....save those $$.

I've already told the story about the dress.  I made my sister's dress too.  The bridesmaids each spent $25 on their outfits.

So girls, it is possible to have a wedding without all the bells and whistles.  My biggest budget item was the photographer.  I have 12 good 8X10 pix of the wedding.  And brides, I look at them every year on my anniversary, I really don't need a bazillion. Sorry to all my photographer friends.  Having said that, the day after your wedding all you really have are the guy and the pictures.  Make sure you get good pix!  Neither you or the guy are gonna look the same in 30 years.

But 33 years ago, I saw Don in one of my classes and well, "Linda like"!  I didn't know it at the time but he had mono.  A free range man with mono is actually fairly easy to catch!  So I did.

We had our first date on April 30, 1978.  We were going to a movie.  Don was on the Va. Tech Rescue Squad.  He had a scanner in his car.   A guy on a motorcyle cut off a semi going downhill.  Motorcyclist lost.  Guess where we were on our first date?  You got it!  We went to a traffic fatality!

So, of course, 13 months later I married him!  I mean, who wouldn't?  And 32 years later, we've been through a lemon car (almost killed us twice), 6 houses, 9 moves, 1 kid who almost died at 5 weeks and had 3 surgeries by age 3, 1 kid who was 10 weeks premature, 2 sudden layoffs, various hospital stays, 1 kid moving cross country...and I can honestly say that knowing all that, I'd do it again in a heart beat!
Feeling blessed, how about you?