Eighteen years ago

Yesterday we celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary.  We were 18 when we met.  How did so much time pass?

Because Braeden loves stories, he asked me in the afternoon to tell him the story about our wedding.  He's heard it before.  He still loves it.  I imagine it is reassuring in a precarious world to hear about your parents' wedding, the day they promised forever and haven't looked back.

I started telling him the familiar story, beginning with the night before when I saw Adam after about a month's separation and he was too busy to kiss me because he was on the phone with the bank about our loan for the Saturn.  It's the same car Adam drives to work every day.

I told him about being at the temple that evening with my grandma (who made it all the more wonderful and memorable) and Marianne and Robert and both of our sets of parents.  I told him about us going out for ice cream in the snazzy new car and then we took a walk along the Jordan River near my grandma's house.  Adam took me back to her house and he went to Denny's with his brother and friend and drowned his nervousness in continual refills of lemonade.  Mormons aren't left with too many vices...

I told him about sitting in the front seat between my parents on the way to the Salt Lake temple on the morning of our wedding.  My parents and both sets of grandparents had been married in the same place.  I told him about going into a big beautiful room to get ready.  Other brides were there with their arsenals of hair products and make-up but I didn't really know how to do anything like that so I didn't.  I told him about how my great aunt had happened along and she'd tied Adam's wedding ring in a handkerchief for me in a fancy way for me to carry.  Then I told Braeden about the handkerchief.  My seminary teacher, Marian Sorenson, had given it to me when I graduated from high school.  She told me to take it to the temple when I got married.  And then she was there for my wedding.

Next I described Adam and his ice cold hands before we got married.  He was desperately nervous.  We went into the room and I listed everyone who was there.  Our dads.  Our moms.  Our grandparents.  Family and friends filled the room.

After the wedding we went outside the temple for pictures.  My sisters immediately started dealing with my hair.  They thought I was not looking as I should--because I've never really been any good at that sort of thing. 

someone took a picture of their efforts

To show there's a theme of my sisters thinking I can't do hair and make-up (they're right), here's a picture from before the reception at Adam's parents' house.  I'm smiling goofily because I think Olivia was making me laugh.  It's a reasonable assumption.

Why aren't my sisters here to help me look better now?

Anyway, after the wedding we took pictures of course and this is one of my favorite pictures from that day:

A panhandler had left a sign behind and my dad picked it up.  Perhaps he was feeling the pinch of having two daughters get married within 9 months of each other.

After pictures we went to a lovely lunch hosted by Adam's parents.  While we were there people handed us gifts and cards containing checks and Adam's aunts and uncles who I was meeting for the first time treated me like royalty.

Somewhere along the telling, I started crying.  I am not a person who cries easily (or something like that) but it just kind of hit me.  Telling the story of our wedding is more than just the story of Adam and me.  It's the story of a whole battalion of people that loved us and supported us and encouraged us and made it all possible.

And in a precarious world, it is reassuring to remember that.

sort of a blurry scanned picture but you get the idea...these are our people