It was pretty tough planning a wedding with a fiance more than 800 miles away while juggling all the other things I had going on. It was a quick decision to have the wedding in Kentucky. It would be much easier for me to plan in Kentucky, and well, I was the one moving, so it was kind of like a final goodbye to my home state before moving away. (I did offer to have the wedding in Kansas if Johnie would live in Kentucky.) I'll start with the things I would have done differently: I would have thrown my budget out the window with my wedding dress and picked my attire based solely on what I loved with little consideration for price. I would have taken more pictures (thank you, Misty, for making me take the ones we did - I remember Sheila asking what poses I wanted and replying, "none." To which you said, "you're my best friend, and if you don't want pictures of your wedding, I do!"). I would have stayed in Kentucky a few days after the wedding. It put a damper on the wonderfully happy occasion to be leaving my home for the final time at the close of the reception. Overall, though, I am proud of the wedding Johnie and I planned and hosted.
Not a surprise for those of you who know me, I definitely made the budget a priority during wedding planning. I would have never wanted an overly extravagant day, anyway, but from the very beginning Johnie and I planned the day with one mantra: The marriage is much more important than the wedding and we would much prefer an impressive marriage over an impressive wedding (it would be nice to have both, and I guess the jury is still out on if we will have either).
A local church, who had nicknamed their building "the wedding chapel," offered their wonderful facilities for free to brides on a first come, first served basis (they even had a "skinny mirror" in the bridal prep room). I had worked with the church through one of my jobs for a couple of years, and booked it immediately. It wasn't very difficult to decide on colors: lavendar. I had imagined wedding decorations in either pink or lavendar. I called my best friend to ask her to be my maid of honor. When she asked if I knew what colors I was going with I told her that I liked those two. Before I could finish by saying I knew she hated wearing pink, and had decided to go with lavendar because I would never ask her to do so, she said, "you're the only person I'd wear pink for." That made my decision even easier.
I also quickly decided on just what I wanted the cake to look like. Although I had not yet decided on how to get it, I was toying with recruiting my mother to make the cake on our own. My boss offered to buy my cake as a wedding gift and suggested a local decorator who had baked her daughters' wedding cakes. She and I went for a tasting. The cake was good, but the price was double what she had expected. While she still offered to help cover the expense of the cake, no matter who made it, that appointment solidified for me who was going to make my cake. I shared with La Lola my thoughts on my dream wedding cake. Offhandedly, I mentioned to her I had seriously considered baking the cake myself until my boss so graciously offered to buy one for me. La Lola let me know that this was a bad idea on my part because wedding cakes are a big deal, they need to be perfect, and I deserved a "special" wedding cake. I must say it was a classic Amy reaction, but I decided when La Lola hinted that my cake wouldn't be as good - or special - if my mom and I did it, that my mom and I would make one amazing cake. And, excuse me while I brag - I absolutely loved our final product. Not only did it taste delicious, but it looked gorgeous, too.
Johnie and I designed our own wedding invitations, and even though Johnie suggested we cater the event throughout the planning process, I remained opposed to the idea to the very end. I wanted the rehearsal dinner to showcase classic Kentucky and planned for my mom to fix chicken and dumplings. I also purposely planned the wedding in the middle of the day and wasn't concerned with serving a full meal to my guests (although there were many tasty fingerfoods). We also picked out some of our favorite songs to sing at the wedding and created a song book as a wedding favor.
Throughout the planning process, Johnie and I knew we would write our own vows. In the beginning, I imagined this would be something we would do months in advance, separately, after much reflection on our love and relationship. It never happened. And, well, with my control issues and Johnie's failure to produce an acceptable proposal, I'm not sure I would have wanted him to "surprise" me with his own vows on our wedding day. So, in the car, on the way to Kentucky from Kansas, I pulled out a scrap piece of paper and we began drafting our lifelong vows to one another and God. Having been married for four years now and looking back over them, I think if I could redo them, I might water them down a bit to be more realistic, but we had lofty goals for ourselves then, and I still think our vows were sweet:
(Johnie) Amy, I promise to always love you, respect you, honor you, and cherish you. I fully devote my life and myself to you for as long as I live. Today, I make it my goal to love you just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it; and to put your needs and concerns above my own. I will constantly strive to make my love for you kind and gentle, pure and humble, strong and everlasting. My love for you will never fail. I promise to be the best husband to you that I possibly can be and to safely lead and protect our family on our journey together as we serve the Lord. I offer you this ring as a token of my promise and my love.
(Amy) John, I promise to always love you, respect you, honor you, and cherish you. I fully devote my life and myself to you for as long as I live. Today, I make it my goal to submit myself to you as I submitted myself to the Lord. I will constantly strive to make my love for you kind and gentle, pure and humble, strong and everlasting. My love for you will never fail. I promise to be the best wife to you that I possibly can be, to walk with you on our journey together, and to guide our family as we serve the Lord. I offer you this ring as a token of my promise and my love.
My fears of Johnie's vows being a little less romantic were made more legitimate when I read the first line back to him in the car and asked if he thought any other verbs needed to be added. His answer: "Well, I was thinking about it, and trying to decide what order they should be in."
I reply, "So, love, respect, honor, and cherish - you want them in a different order?"
He answers, "I can't decide what order they should be in..." After a short pause, "How about I say, 'Amy, I promise to always love you, respect you, honor you, and cherish you, but not necessarily in that order. Except for love. Everything that I do will be a result of my love for you.'"
"Seriously?" I ask.
"Yeah... because everything I do will be a result of my love for you, but those things shouldn't be ranked or done in a particular order."
"We" decided not to make that edit on the vows. :)
While I enjoyed having our wedding between Christmas and New Year's, and enjoy celebrating our anniversary that time of year since, our wedding date, and coordinating the event with hundreds of miles between us, presented a few obstacles. One being securing the wedding license. Between our schedule, and the courthouse schedule, we didn't have a lot of options. A day or so after Christmas, my brother caught a stomach bug. By the following day, I had it, too. I kept putting off the wedding license, due to my illness, until the last day the courthouse was going to be open prior to our wedding. My stomach was a bit more settled that morning, so I slowly got ready, and we headed toward town. I was barely a mile down the road before the nausea hit again full force. I cracked the window, willing myself to make it. My efforts were to no avail. Johnie had to pull the car over for me, and one of my worst fears since acquiring this virus was realized: for all time part of my wedding story would include throwing up on the way to get our marriage license.
The stomach virus had both positive and negative effects on the wedding itself. It was a wonderful pre-wedding crash diet. My dress definitely fit more loosely that day. Unfortunately though, it made it's way to several friends and family that morning, preventing many of them from being able to attend.
In an effort for full disclosure, I began feeling nervous about the whole thing a couple days prior to the big event. I'm not sure if it's part of my Appalachian heritage, my grandmother's superstitions, or the silly ways my mom always looks at things, but I've always been on the lookout for signs and omens. A preacher who was a wonderful friend of mine once shared with me that when a river winds it's way to the ocean, it never takes a straight path, but rather bends and curves as it comes to obstacles. He said that sometimes we as humans don't recognize obstacles meant to lead us in another direction, but sometimes stand in one place and continue to bang our heads against the rock. I began wondering if I'd missed some signs - if maybe I shouldn't have settled for a lackluster proposal. If maybe the fact that I wasn't going to finish my degree should've been a red flag for me. Maybe my stomach problems were not the result of a virus so much as my body trying to reject my decision and possibly God trying in one last attempt to show me I was making a mistake. I worried that I didn't really know the man I was about to marry. The amount of time we had spent face to face in one another's company was small. What if part of the whole promotion-moving to Kansas thing was part of a scheme to completely isolate me from my friends and family?
In my doubt, I began replaying the past year. I really had no reason to believe that Johnie hadn't been genuine all along. And, I began remembering all of the good signs - the things that told me this was really meant to be, from our similar backgrounds, to the way he looked at me and treated me. I had always said that if I ever found a man who made me his priority I would marry him. Johnie definitely made it no secret that I was his priority. And, at the end of the day, my husband once more owes thanks to Gary Barrett. As wrong as all of my intuitions could have been, and as possible as it was that he could put on an act for me for a year, Gary and his family had known Johnie all of his life. I had known them all of my life, and I trusted them. I knew if they knew of anything that should concern me, I would've known about it, too.
By the time I reached the day of my wedding, I was exhausted in every form. I had been working too much, studying too hard, sleeping too little, and riding a roller coaster of emotions for the past several months. I hadn't fully recuperated from the stomach bug and I was about to become a wife and move hundreds of miles from home all in one day. I've often said I wish I could have another wedding day so I could actually enjoy it this time. But, it was still a nice day, nonetheless.
Prior to the wedding, I had worried about marriage. I had worried about my ability to actually do it. I thought my independence and stubborness just might hinder my success as a wife. I foresaw many arguments in my future as I fought to have my own way in a relationship that by its very nature sometimes requires that we not have our own way. I'm also not one to stick around for something I don't like - I've always striven to change things in my life that I'm not satisfied with, even if it means leaving a school, leaving a job, leaving a residence, leaving a boy, or leaving a friend. I just prefer being happy. I worried that when marriage stopped making me happy, I'd leave it too. I worried I'd feel stuck, or find another life or another person I might prefer sometime in the future.
Prior to the wedding, I thought that a wedding ceremony did nothing to actually change a person or a relationship. At least for me, the wedding ceremony changed me. Maybe it is a switch that gets flipped in all of us. Maybe making that vow "for real" to God carried more weight than I realized before. Maybe a marriage really is different from the very beginning. Whatever the reason, I've never been the same since the afternoon of December 30th, 2006. Actually saying those words, actually going through the ceremony, humbled me. When it was over I felt like I had been handed a most precious and fragile gift. I felt like I had been given the opportunity to have a great life, with only one shot to make it happen, and it was all up to me. I felt the need to choose my words and my actions carefully, as they could have a profound effect on this other human being who I felt more connected to, more responsible for, than I ever had anyone else. I knew that one bad move, one harsh word, could never be taken back and would always remain on this relationship that would always be.
Suddenly, I knew that nothing was really all about me, and that all the things I had been so concerned with before meant very little. I've found it isn't difficult at all to follow a man who puts my happiness behind only the will of God and ahead of even his own wants. And, when you're married to someone who places you above everyone else, how could you not be motivated to do the same?
I have a deeper appreciation for what the scripture says about marriage. As Johnie and I (usually) quietly overlook one another's daily mistakes and shortcomings, and love each other despite knowing all our past failures, I learn more about the mercy, grace, and love shown to me by Jesus. I have watched in awe as our relationship has grown, developed, deepened, strengthened, and been blessed these first few years. I had no idea marriage could be so wonderful. While I may have had a few doubts back then, I made one of the best decisions of my life the day I married Johnie.
