Three years of bliss.

Today we celebrate our 3 year wedding anniversary!

I absolutely LOVED our wedding day. Even though it started too early and was very busy, it was the best day of my life and I would love to re-live it over and over again (not sure that Matt would though). I must get this from my mom, but I love to just look at our wedding pictures and watch our wedding video. 

I do wish I could have done a few little tidbits differently, but overall our day was perfect. I only have a few "digital" copies of our wedding photos (which are really just scanned on our scanner, because my photog charged like 40 bucks per original!). Since they are scanned they are not great copies, but I love them anyway.

I thought I'd post a few of my favorites, not in any order really. And since I've never documented the story on here, I wanted to do that too. It might get lengthy, so go ahead, just look at the pictures! 

Plus, it'll probably get all mushy.

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Since Matt was in Cleveland in school, we only had the chance to get married over his spring break, he flew home on Wednesday. Thursday morning I went through the temple to get my endowments out. That night, it's kind of funny, but we hadn't gotten Matt a wedding ring yet, so we ran all over the place trying to find one for him. Luckily we got one about 8pm that night. After that, he and I drove up to Salt Lake City to meet our families, where we were all staying over night in a hotel.

On March 9th, mine and my sister-in-law, Angi's day started out sometime around 5am-ish (Thanks again Ang!). About 6:30am, Matt and I and our parents walked over to the temple. It was a beautiful and sunny morning. I remember walking through the streets with big buildings and the sun had just come up not long before and was shining on all of the buildings. 

We got to the temple, got checked in and did all our paperwork and everything. Then Matt went one way and I went the other way with my mom. We got to the "princess's prep room" and I got all ready for the sealing. I remember the sweet little temple workers told me that they were having 50 brides go through that day, which was about average. That explained why we got stuck with the 7:40am sealing session. 

Shortly after, they lead me to Matt where he was waiting in the celestial room. We were able to sit and wait in there while our family and everyone arrived. It was such a huge, beautiful room (sadly, we haven't been back to the SLC temple other than just for weddings). I was so nervous up until this point, but this gave us a chance to just talk. I remember feeling so peaceful and happy.

After a few minutes, they came and got us. We met Matt's grandpa Hess in the hallway. The rest of our guests were already waiting for us in the sealing room. Grandpa Hess had to have been about 92 years old or something close to that. He got special permission to seal us (because he use to be a sealer). We were so happy and grateful that he was able to do the sealing for us. He did a beautiful job, even though I only remember bits and pieces of it, because I was so nervous. 

When we entered the sealing room, I felt my face go cherry red, because all eyes were on us of course. We sat down and I remember squeezing Matt's hand so tight my knuckles were white, mainly because I was just so nervous, excited and not sure what to expect of the whole ceremony. 

Grandpa Hess gave us some great advice and told us a sweet story about him and his wife. He and his wife loved music and he told us a phrase from a song they used, I guess as a theme in their marriage, "Are the stars out tonight, I don't know if it's cloudy or bright. I only have eyes for you."

Matt and I knelt at the alter and I knew our whole family and some friends were behind me and in front of me. Our mother's were to my left and both of our dad's were at my right. Grandpa Hess stood to my right. As I mentioned before, I remember bits and pieces of the ceremony, but I mainly remember holding Matt's hands across the alter and just staring into his eyes. It was as if everyone in the room disappeared. I was overcome with so much joy, tears filled my eyes. Matt reached in his pocket and handed me a tissue. I knew I had just made the most important decision of my life.

After the ceremony, we hugged each person that came and I'll never forget what Grandpa Clark said to Matt, being the proud grandfather he was. He said in a very loud (irreverent way) "Hey, you're going to be an MD!" Remember, he was about 106 at the time and was also an MD. That was about all he said, it was pretty funny.

I met back up with my mom and Angi who got me all primed back up. I won't forget a girl who was getting ready right next to me, wearing the exact same wedding dress. Nor will I forget the dirty look she gave me because of it....kind of funny. I also won't forget standing in the hall in my terribly high-high-hills, tripping on my huge dress and a very old, small temple worker lady caught me as I fell over. I thought I may have killed her. And the last thing I won't forget, because Matt won't let me forget it, is that he (and everyone else) had to wait for like 30 minutes for me to come out.

This is one of my absolute favorite pictures.

Here are just a few of the detail pictures.

My mother is an amazing cake decorator and did it professionally for years. She quit doing it some time ago, but thankfully did ours. I LOVED it and still love looking at pictures of it. If there was one detail of the wedding that turned out perfectly, this was it.

Thanks mom, you're amazing!

I also loved our flowers, especially the limes! 

After having pictures around the temple, in what turned out to be a perfect and warm early March morning, we all met over at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to have our wedding luncheon. I only remember that our main course was chicken parmesan (what I ordered on our first date, ironically), but again, I was feeling pretty nervous all day I couldn't even eat much of it.

Here is just another random assortment of wedding day photos (sorry about all the kissing!).

 

This is when we came out of the temple. Again, I am not a fan of having the spotlight. What do you do when you come out of the temple and everyone is screaming, snapping pictures and cheering for you??? You kiss. This must have been the instant we came out, because all I remember was feeling dumb, so I just grabbed Matt and kissed him!

After all the fun morning/early afternoon festivities. We went to get my hair and makeup touched up again and then headed to the reception center. A great thing about your own wedding is that you don't have to do a whole lot of behind-the-scenes work.

We had our reception in Salem, near the pond. And this bridge just so happened to be the exact place that Matt proposed to me (3 months prior).

And my good ole friends will hate me for this one, but these are my young, lovely bridesmaids. I put them in charge of their dresses and they absolutely hated what they came up with. I don't think they turned out so bad, in the picture at least. Thanks for being a good sport girls.

After our wedding, we headed to southern California for a short honeymoon to see Wicked in Hollywood, hit up Disneyland (and I said I would never be "one of those people" who go to D-land on their honeymoon...hah) and veg in San Diego. Four short days later we returned home, spent the day doing the whole thing over again for his sister who got married. In between her wedding festivities, we packed up our ABF truck. The next day we flew to dreary, cold Cleveland to start our new life together. It was crazy, scary and a bit insane the first few months (what was I thinking?!!! CLEVELAND!!!). But, we have loved being together, have had so many great adventures and created so many wonderful memories that I wouldn't trade for anything. 

Thank you for being an absolute prince to me Matt. You treat me better than anyone ever could. You are wonderful and I love you so much! 

Happy Anniversary!