Welcome!

My oldest daughter was married on Sunday, February 27th of this year. True to it's name, the day was bright and clear in contrast to the cold and rain we’d had during the week. When the wedding began at 5 o’clock sunlight was streaming through the western windows of St. Mark Lutheran Church, illuminating the altar area with golden light, and I thought it just couldn’t be any more perfect! And I was right! :) Our wedding day was wonderful.

Welcome to my post-wedding blog. I plan to share what my daughter and I experienced over the past year in the hope that it will be helpful to prospective brides and mothers-of-brides as they plan The Day. Throughout this blog I will use “we” unless something was strictly my idea or my daughter’s idea in which case I’ll give credit where credit is due. Put simply, we worked as a team and I’m firmly convinced this contributed significantly to the success of our wedding day.

I say “our” wedding day. A lot of folks would correct me saying, “It’s your daughter’s wedding” as if they thought I was taking over and my daughter’s wishes were being pushed aside in favor of my own, but that wasn’t the case. At the worst I was living vicariously through her wedding, but I never thought of it as “my” wedding. It was her wedding but it was also very much “our” wedding. It was definitely a team effort.

I never had a wedding of my own. I got married while serving in the United States Navy and living far from home. Although my mother, sister, and sister-in-law affectionately took on the task of trying to put a wedding together for me in our hometown, I realized that even the nicest wedding they could create would not be “my” wedding. The fun part of having a wedding is the planning in my humble opinion!

So, I politely declined their offer of help and was quietly married in a small wedding chapel off base. I wore a nice dress, not a wedding dress. My husband wore nice clothes, no tie. We have one blurry picture from the day snapped by the presiding minister. The minister’s wife was the only witness. We went back to work directly after we were married, no honeymoon. A year later the chapel was bulldozed and a parking lot put in its place! This may sound like a tale of woe but my husband and I have been married over 23 years now, which is a testimony to a profound truth: the wedding doesn’t make the marriage! The planning of a wedding, however, can reveal much about the character of those involved! I’ll write more about that later.

Anyway, I admit I’ve had some regrets over the years about my wedding day; nothing that I’m hanging on to, but I wanted more for my daughter. Thankfully, she was eager for me to help! And for that I’m very, very grateful.

Finally, this blog will be written from a decidedly "conservative" viewpoint since I am a practicing Christian and take my relationship with Jesus Christ very seriously. That's not to say I'm gonna bash anyone over the head with "religion" but my beliefs do inform my perspective of the world around me. Weddings, in particular, take on many, many forms -- some spiritual, some material, and everything in between! My goal is simply to tell about our wedding and, hopefully, give brides additional perspectives as they put together their own special day.