Once Upon A Time... Part 20

We decided we would get married in the Bountiful temple. It was right in between our parents' houses. There was a dilemma, though. Dan's parents and sister and my brother wouldn't be home from their missions until September. That was 8 months away! Dan's parents couldn't leave the mission for a wedding unless they wanted to just end their mission early. This really put a damper on our plans. We knew it was right to get married and the more we talked about a date, the harder it was to plan to wait until September or October. We went to the temple together and prayed and fasted about what to do. We decided that we needed to get married. Soon. We weren't getting younger, you know!

Dan told his parents. They were disappointed to not be able to be here. I think they may have been even more upsest about it than they let us know. I cried about it for quite a while. I still have guilt even now. But this was about starting our life together. We would miss them. We would miss having Shelba and Alex there, too. But we needed to get married.

We decided on May. I called to make an appointment in the Bountiful temple. No openings in May. I knew June would be a crazy month. So what does a girl in love do? Go earlier. How about April? April 30? Okay. Sounds good to me. Considering it was February, we knew we needed to get on the ball. The date was set and other arrangements were now being made.

I called the Joseph Smith Memorial building to book a room for the reception. We are firm believers in our family that the family should actually enjoy the reception. It would be such a long and tiring day, anyway. So my mom always gets great deals on flowers, cake and dresses so we can have a reception center and catering. Then we can sit back and enjoy the day. I got a room booked and ready to go for the evening of April 30.

My mom's good friend said she would give us a really good deal on a cake. Done! We went to a florist that did my sister's wedding. Oh! Calla Lilys. That's all. Just Calla Lilys. Simple. My colors are black and off white. Perfect!

My mom and sisters had made a game of getting wedding dresses for as cheap as they could. Considering you only do this once, the cheaper the better. So we headed out and actually couldn't find anything! Lots of fluff. I'm not a fluff kinda girls. Lots of bows. I need to not accentuate the area where the bow would go. We looked through the clearance holiday stuff. We found the perfect top. It was off white (perfect) and had beading all over it. It was heavy! It fit. It was $50. Sold!

My mom made a skirt in the same color to match. I bought shoes to match. It was perfect. I didn't want anything in my hair. You see, the regular wedding day fair was just not my thing. I didn't like the white puffy marshmallow dresses with bows and a huge veil. I had a hard enough time making myself thin without all the fluff to make me, well, fluffy. I would actually have just worn black! That's slimming! The main thing was that I loved what I got. This would be the most important day of my life thus far. With a string of pearls for my neck and a wrap of pearls for my wrist, I added the pearl earrings that my 3 sisters had already worn on their wedding days. Everything was perfect.