Sunday, May 23, 2010

Happy Schmappy Anniversary!

This past Sunday afternoon we were driving back from a nice weekend out of town and stopped at a Panera to eat lunch. At first I thought that it was a bit underwhelming, since it was my first anniversary meal, and we were at a Panera, but then I realized, it was completely appropriate; one year ago today, we also stopped in a Panera to get some food.

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Okay so I was going to upload a photo that our photographer took, of us, in Panera, but discovered that it was still in RAW format (approximately 13MB apiece), I had put them all on my portable drive to save space, and I can't preview any of the 1000+ pictures unless I have them open in Picasa... which would require putting them back all on my hard drive.

So instead, I'll just say that after seven hours of heat, wedding photo goodness and fun, I was more than a little thirsty/hungry/tired, our photographer for some reason recommended we go to this 'quaint little sandwich shop' down the street, which turned out to be freakin Panera, I walked in, the girl behind the counter surreptitiously left the counter, and then suddenly the entire staff of Panera appeared and gawped at us for the ten minutes we were there. Lovely. I think I got a free piece of bread though... at least, I don't remember paying for it. Oh, and Matt spilled his mango smoothie all over his white dress shirt, but luckily the tie covered it up. The secrets they don't tell you about weddings...

Mostly I just wanted to commemorate our first year together by (finally) posting a few pictures, for fun, and say that the first year has just FLOWN by! Here's to many more years to come!!



A million thank yous to everyone who stood outside and for standing in this kind of ridiculous can't-see-anyone-semi-circle. Bless Zach's heart for arranging it... clearly he is not familiar with the Mormon temple "here is where the requisite wedding party stands to get the group shot" pose. I really am still sorry for the crappy heat and sun.... but I love you and appreciate every drop of sweat shed in our behalf!!!!

And what's a wedding without a funny story right? Most of you have already heard this one but it goes down in my own family lore. It took me months to slowly glean it from everyone before I finally got the full picture.

It started out at the reception, as I *finally* sat down to dinner. My mom made a passing comment on how AWESOME Jen, my flower arranger, was. To this I will always heartily agree and said "yeah, Jen's pretty amazing right?" Mom: "She's AMAZING. When I punch the cake, she fix it. She is AMAZING." Me: "uh.... what??"

So during a break I casually strolled over to my girlfriends and asked "so what's this about my mom punching my cake...?" Girlfriends (in horror): "Omg we weren't going to SAY anything to you, you weren't supposed to KNOW about it!!!" Me: "so... what happened?" Girlfriends (ever loyal and considerate) "Oh don't worry about Jen, it's your big day, we'll tell you later, never mind..."

Months later, I finally extracted the full story as told from my sister, the de facto wedding planner, and Jen, the AMAZING friend:

Melinda: "So yeah. The cake. So the cake people came that afternoon and delivered and cake and put it on a table and left, and of course everyone was busy running around and setting up and I wasn't watching Jennifer! I wasn't watching! Apparently at some point Mom decided she was going to move your wedding cake, BY HERSELF, I don't know WHAT she was thinking, and of course she goes to pick it up and her hand, like, swiped off the side of the cake and then she's just standing there screaming SOMEONE DO SOMETHING and then she looks at her fist covered in frosting and she just starts LICKING it and is like 'mmmm this is good' lick lick lick and JENNIFER I AM FREAKING OUT SHE JUST PUNCHED YOUR CAKE!!!!! AAAAAH! And she's just standing there LICKING HER FIST!!!!"

Here, Jen the AMAZING friend completes the story: "Well, I was arranging your flowers and Melinda comes RUNNING up to me and says "um, excuse me please Jen, but we have a potential disaster on our hands can you please come help right now" so I walk over to where she's running and I see your mother approaching your wedding cake with a large knife in her hand, and whatever it was she was planning to do I just said "STOP! Whatever you're doing, put down that knife!!! We'll fix it, don't worry..."

And thus Jen proceeded to artfully stick some flowers in the offending corner (I have pictures somewhere) and voila, crisis was averted. You really would have never known anything was miss, unless you wanted to wonder why save for the fact that the flowers on the bottom tier are completely covering up the one corner of decorating. Oh well, makes for a funny story.

Six months later when my own sister got married I made sure to stay very close to the cake the entire time, and at one point when my mom flung out her arm I nearly bowled her over throwing myself between her and the table. You learn your lessons. ;)

Happy anniversary Matt!!! Your family was quite normal the entire time, thank you.

5 comments:

senategirl said...

What are weddings for, except to make great stories?

You forgot to mention how much fun everyone had and the Kung Fu dance. So sad I missed it, but the kids were sound asleep in their beds.

xoxo,
Jen

Meg! said...

I laughed so hard while reading the cake story that my kids think I'm a bit crazy (well, the little ones do, the teenagers think I'm completely insane, but they caused it so...).
Anyway, I can't believe it's been a whole year already. That was so much fun that I had almost forgotten about the hours and hours of pictures and heat and sun. Totally worth it to be part of your special day!

Christina said...

Jen, my dear, you and Matt are worth every drop of sweat and every bit of sunstroke. The end. Also, I absolutely loved watching the cake story unfold and see how Jen saved the say, seamlessly and beautifully. I'm still sorry that the Kung Fu dance didn't quite work out as we all wanted it to, but it was sure fun learning the steps beforehand!

Hooray and happy anniversary, my dear, dear friends! May there be many, many, MANY more to come...w/ accompanying stories. :)

Pier 366 said...

Oh my gosh, I am still laughing after reading that cake story. And to think we were probably all "standing" around outside---actually we were clear cutting the greenery on the other side of the little bridge to find the appropriate "look" for the ring ceremony---incidentally, nice catch on the ring that day, in case I forgot to mention it then---when this was happening! Sounds exactly like something that would happen to me, us---Piersons. Great quick thinking Jen and a huge belated thank you.
I agree with you Jen (our Jen)that this year has flown by---you two are wonderful together---I am grateful everyday that you found each other!

Frenchie said...

hahaha!at least you know your cake was good! i love your wedding picks by the way...you guys make the greart outdoors sexy again!