Happy Anniversary to DH and Me!

Today is my 13th wedding anniversary! We definitely had a bit of an adjustment this year as we aren’t spending Memorial Day week in Boca Grande. Since I was 12 years old, my family has spent every Memorial Day Weekend in Boca Grande, but now that we have little ones in school, DH and I have to change our schedule a bit! DH and I got married in Boca Grande in 1995. Small wedding in a tiny little 150-year-old church, just immediate family and about 30 close friends. My Nana made my dress; about three weeks before the wedding, it was still a pile of fabric sitting in her sewing room, but I knew she’d get it done, and she did, in about 10 days. So about 10 days before the wedding, she had all her friends over and had me model it for them. Everyone ooohh-ed and aahhh-ed, particularly at all the lace sewn into the bodice and at the 88 buttons that ran up the back (DH was not thrilled about those :-). When I went back to Nana’s room and took it off, Nana’s dog Penny decided to christen it for us. Literally! It seems that Nana had spent so much time with that dress the previous 10 days that Penny felt she didn’t spend enough time with her, so she let Nana know exactly how she felt about that dress. Nana hit the roof! I was amazingly calm. “Nana, it’s okay, we’ll take it to the cleaners; it will come out,” I said as Nana uttered a slew of four-letter words at Penny as she chased her under the bed. To this day, two cleanings later, there’s still a slight stain in the underlining of the train. At least it was in the lining!

We had more excitement at the wedding itself. The highlight was DH calling “Time Out” in the middle of the ceremony, literally holding up the football Time Out signal because the pastor went a little over board on the number of lines she gave him at once. During the rehearsal the night before, she was doing very short phrases, so DH told her he thought he could handle a little more. Apparently not! He brought the house down with his, “Um, Time Out! We gotta run through that one again!” After the ceremony, we rang the church bell as tradition called for, hopped in our lovely decorated golf cart and cruised down Banyan Street, waving to all the guests lining the street on the way to the community center for the reception. After the reception, half the guests ended up skinny dipping in the gulf…it was quite a party. This picture was a candid taken at the reception. Have no clue who DH is yelling at, but it’s one of my favorite pictures.