That’s how long it’s been since our wedding day. Twenty-seven years. Our “wedding day” is not to be confused with our “marriage” day. We got married in Las Vegas on November 25, 1988. But, three months later, on February 18, 1989, we still had our wedding.
I was just talking with my favorite server at Denny’s last night. You know, I had my jaw wired shut for six weeks before the wedding–car accident in Iowa the week after Christmas. I got really good at blending up hot ham and cheese sandwiches from Arby’s with a bit of milk. And Jamocha shakes? Lived on those suckers. In fact, I drank so many that I can’t stand to think of one even today!
I was skinny back then…
… and six weeks of a liquid diet didn’t help. They kept taking in my dress until the week before the wedding when I got the wires off my teeth. But, I still couldn’t eat more than a bite or three. So, on my wedding day, they zipped me up in my dress and it was still a bit… loose. Talk about under-exaggeration. I can’t tell you how many times my photographer told me to “get back in your dress.” You see, I’d be standing there, I’d turn, and my dress would stay in place. Awkward!
We’ve lived in the same house for those twenty-seven years. We’ve raised six children and are working on the final three. In fact, three of our children were born right here in this house. I married my best friend, and the night he broke my jaw in a car accident is the night I truly fell in love with him. That’s pretty amazing.
I’ll never forget laying on my in-laws’ couch, hurting too much to sit up, and hearing my husband sobbing in the kitchen that he’d “hurt me.” My father-in-law came over to me, hunkered down to check to see that I was okay, and then said, “That man in there sure loves you.”
And he still does! Even after twenty-seven years!
That just amazes me. Especially when I figured out a couple of years ago that his “proposal” could have been a rhetorical question. OOPS!
I told him not to tell me if it was. I don’t even want to know. When a girl seriously and without reservation says she is NEVER getting married and her best friend asks, “Well, would you marry me?” And that same girl takes him seriously, figuring God is telling her something, the last thing she wants twenty-five years later, is to find out that it was curiosity. Ahem.
God has a sense of humour when he decides 2 people are meant to be.
I was a divorce with 2 children. My ex husband had been a mechanic with kleptomania. There was enough stuff in my basement to build a D8 Cat.
Friends from my church came over and we boxed all the stuff. And I put an add in the paper so I could sell the stuff and reclaim my basement.
Well the only reply I got was from a fellow who could not afford to pay me. He asked if he could secure it with $10 and pay it off monthly. I had no other customers, so I said yes. I started to take his three sons to Sunday School and other Church outings.He made me promise not to convert them. I promised but did not promise anyone else would not convert them. I am pleased to say they all accepted the Lord.
By this time Jim had fallen in love with me, his boys adored me, and i was fostering tender feelings for him.
I could not be unequally yoked so would not accept his proposal of marriage.
More time went by. Things started getting very difficult for Jim, One of my friends said she was fed up reasoning with him, she would stand back and let the Lord sort him out while she prayed. He phoned me one day,said “tell Sue to stop praying, I am ready already.”. Jim accepted the Lord. With the backing of our Baptist we married. So now I had a new husband 3 more sons and all the junk I had sold to him, and never got paid for, but got his junk as well.
We had twenty wonderful years together until cancer claimed him.
But as a dedicated neat freak, I married four of the most unorganized male creatures, with all their junk. So you can’t tell me God does not have a sense of humour.
That is such a fun look back. Congratulations on 25 years. I already have Tarnished Silver, it’s one of my favorites outside of the Alexa books. Thanks for giving us such a great reason to smile.
Congratulations, you two! I love how y’all love each other (It shows!) and I love your your kids are so much like both families! Wow! Everything about this post seems exclamatory!
I love you, Chautona. I’m glad you said yes! 😉
Aw, thanks!
Happy Wedding Day Anniversary!
Okay…now I really want to hear the whole story! How did you get engaged? Why did you marry in Vegas? Did you elope? Any more pictures????
Nosiness can be a curse, sometimes 😉
That’s how we got engaged. We were talking about life and what we were going to do. He was going to open “Mayhem Software” and I didn’t quite know. But I DID know that I was NEVER getting married. Not doing it. No. Way. No. How. And that’s when he said, “Well, would you marry ME?” I had one of those flash thoughts that work faster than seconds. I thought, “Either this guy is an idiot or this is a God thing.” I knew he wasn’t an idiot, so I figured God had a hand in this. So… that was it. September 1988 we got engaged. He bought a house a month later. He was to move in December 1. And if I moved in, too, that would save us 200 a month. SO… we drove to Las Vegas and got married so I could move in. Just had the wedding anyway. Pictures… I’ll have to dig ’em out. 😀