Five Years and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt?

The day of August 26th, 2000 dawned as a beautiful day in Yakima, WA. The sun was shining, yet it wasn't too hot. And inside Tieton Drive Bible Chapel, things were just starting to get busy. The wedding was at three, but there was still lots to be done leading up to it. I spent the whole morning at the church putting up yellow roses on the end of each pew. And putting up more yellow roses in vases all over the place. And putting up dead guy flowers. [Explanation: One of Maggie's sister's best friend's father was killed in an accident a week before our wedding. His funeral was the day before and there was one nice flower arrangement that matched our wedding colors. So we snatched it. With permission, of course.] I also spent a lot of time cutting the edges of the programs with those stupid frilly scrapbooking scissors.

Once everything was set up, we just did normal wedding stuff. You know, get dressed, take pictures, feel like you're going to puke, etc. To be honest, I don't remember much of the wedding after this point. I do remember that the brickfather, who was officiating, forgot to tell everyone to sit down after the brickbride walked up the aisle. That was funny. I also remember the musical number performed by a trio of girls: two cousins and one sister of Maggie's. According to Maggie's grandmother, that was the only part of the wedding that made her cry. Not because it was so beautiful, but because it was so bad. Claire, the flute player, was not aware that there is a difference between B and Bb. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

Other things about the wedding I remember:

After the ceremony, when the brickbrothers (both groomsmen) came out into the foyer, I noticed that they were just sobbing. Picture that: Two big guys (deuce, deuce and a half) bawling their eyes out.

Um, that's it.

From here on out, I will recount the rest of the wedding day and the honeymoon in picture-and-caption format! This was before the age of digital cameras, but not before the age of scanners.


That's us, kissing right after we fed each other a little bit of cake. You know, that big white thing in the picture? I wish I would have scanned a better picture of Maggie in her wedding dress because she was stunningly beautiful (you still are, too), but I didn't. Anyway, the reception was spectacular. We had it at the Doubletree in Yakima, which meant that it was real good since the banquet manager knew that it was for the daughter of her boss's boss. Also, it was not dry, which meant that a lot of people from my family's church had not experienced anything like it before (they're almost all teetotalers). Even my mom danced to Love Shack.




No, your eyes aren't fooling you, that's Maggie drinking straight out of a bottle of champagne. Cheap champagne. This was on the first day of our honeymoon. I skipped the wedding night for, ahem, obvious reasons. We planned on driving to Seattle that morning (we flew out on Wednesday morning) but instead we went to Maggie's mom's house to open our presents. How often do you get that many presents. Plus it would have been mean to the kids to leave so many unopened presents just sitting around, tempting them. Once they were opened,though, the temptation was gone. Let's be honest here, it was mostly boring stuff, right?





I'd ask you to guess where we went on our honeymoon, but if you know us and you've read very many of my posts you know the answer: Disneyland. I honestly hardly remember anything about what we did at Disneyland. I know we both bought wicked awesome hats at the Indiana Jones store, and apparently we took a picture with Mickey. Other than that, though, I'm kind of drawing a blank. I know it was fun, though.







Thanks to the brickfather-in-law, we had free hotel rooms for the entire honeymoon, including at this beautiful hotel, right on the beach in Santa Monica. We did feel a little out of place in a $350+ per night hotel. Especially when we asked at the front desk where the nearest McDonald's was. We were still poor college students, see?










That's Maggie letting the waves wash over her feet during one of our long walks on the beach at night in Santa Monica. How did I ever get to marry such a gorgeous woman?










All in all, our honeymoon was one of the best weeks of my life. Except for the part where Maggie got sick. That sucked. But other than that, it was awesome.

I love you Maggie.