Three Years!

This Tuesday, January 17, marked three years of marriage for Jimmy and me. It has been awesome, and

we are thankful to God for the life we have been able to share so far. 

I wanted to post several pictures from our wedding for nostalgia's sake:

Getting ready to cut our cheesecake! We had a whole table full of delicious, homemade cheesecake in the place of a more traditional wedding cake. So, every anniversary we now have cheesecake as part of our celebration.

Our Willow Tree cake topper

Our first dance was to Michael Buble's song "You and I." We found this song just a few days before the wedding!

Leaving to start our new life together! (Everyone was ringing tiny little bells instead of throwing stuff on us.)

We left for our honeymoon the next morning after brunch at Brig's. : )

We spent a cozy, wonderful week in the western NC mountains in a little town called Sapphire.

I loved our wedding day. I had spent the previous night at my apartment by myself so I could enjoy some solitude before our big day. That morning I spent some time with the Lord before Jimmy picked me up for our breakfast at Bruegger's. Then he dropped me off at the hair place, where I met my cousin, friend, and matron of honor Meredith, who chatted with me while Danielle did my hair. Next it was back to my apartment where Mandie, my friend and bridesmaid, did my make-up. Finally it was on to the church to get dressed, take pictures, and get married! By the way, it was a super cold but beautiful and sunny day. 

Once at the church and dressed, Jimmy and I had a moment to see each other in our wedding clothes, and then it was on to pictures. Pictures were interesting. They were taken by the talented Blakeley Swanson from my hometown, who was definitely a hippie back in the day and remains so. He kept us laughing! 

We almost forgot the wedding rings before the ceremony. As in, we were lined up ready to head in and remembered them. Good thing Noah Joyner had a key to the nursery where we changed!

The whole wedding party came in to "Fairest Lord Jesus," including my Dad and me (during the last verse). My friend Rachel sang it beautifully.

Our ceremony was performed by Nathan Knight, and it was a sweet time. Jimmy and I shared a bit of our testimonies and sang together. I had been praying for so much peace on our wedding day that people would wonder what was wrong with me, and the Lord answered that prayer more than I could have imagined. By His grace I felt relaxed all day, even as we were singing in front of our guests. We exchanged vows which we had written, shared communion, and tried to communicate the Gospel to our guests. 

Right after the wedding, we had a receiving line in the back of the sanctuary, and I'm pretty sure we got to speak to everyone! We had John Coltrane playing during this time, and everyone ate the reception food.

After we ate, we cut our cheesecake, did toasts, and started the dancing! Jimmy and I danced, then I danced with my Dad to "My Girl," then Jimmy surprised his Mom and danced with her to "Boogie Shoes!" Jimmy and I had hand-picked some of our favorite oldies and love songs to dance to, especially some good Motown, and my cousin Nick dee-jayed.

The only time I cried all day was one point when some family friends and my Dad and I were all sitting at a table together. I can't remember the song that was playing, but I looked across the table at him, asked him to dance, and then cried in his shoulder. (Like boo-hooed, not just a pretty little tear or two...)

We left our wedding reception around 6, to the tune of another Michael Buble song and lots of tiny bells.

It was a great day with many more memories than I have room to write here, but I wanted to chronicle some of this since we will eventually print our blog our into a book. : )

And on to pictures from the other day....

Here we are before we left for our night out. Mom, Dad, and Daniel came to baby-sit!

The first place we stopped was the jewelry store! My sweet man had saved some tips to be able to get me this pearl necklace:

The earrings were an anniversary gift from Helzberg (they are good to their customers). I love the set and can't wait to wear it!

Then we had a great meal together at Chili's, including paradise pie for dessert! It was really nice to be out on a Tuesday night- the restaurant wasn't too busy, and we got to enjoy our meal in our own little quiet corner. Jimmy had fajitas and I had the cajun chicken pasta.

After dinner, we spent some time reviewing this past year and setting some goals for our family for this upcoming year (the sheets for this conversation came from our small group leader Larry, and we worked through them last year, too). It was fun to read what we had written last year and see that we had met many of our goals! It's also good to talk about ways we want to grow and things we'd like to do this year. We decided we would keep our sheets from each year!

After dinner we headed home for cheesecake and a movie! (Yes, we had two desserts that night.)

Here is the amazing cheesecake we got from Whole Foods (I'm not sure there's any better cheesecake than what they make...):

This awesomeness is two pieces of chocolate peanut butter cheesecake! We shared the first piece the night before during the movie Moneyball and shared the second one on our anniversary during the movie Courageous (a gift from Jimmy's Mom, and an excellent, God-honoring film).

Obviously we recommend it if you haven't seen it! (Especially for dads!)

We had a great night together, and look forward to many more anniversaries!