
This post is long overdue. Even when I’m posting regularly to my blog I tend to forget to post things about major life events. To be fair, this isn’t as much a “follow-along-with-my-life” kind of blog as it is a “Peter’s random thoughts” blog. But as I was saying, I said I would post about my engagement but never really did. And now it’s been a month since my wedding and I’m finally getting my act together and telling you all about it. Better late than never, right?
I’ll start at the week before the wedding. Anyone who’s planned a wedding can probably empathize when I say that things got a little hectic the week before the wedding. A week before the wedding the first out-of-towners showed up – Randal and Theresa Miller! I hadn’t seen them in a while so I wanted to hang out with them as much as possible, which, of course, made the wedding preparations slightly more hectic because I had to schedule them around hang out time. I should add that Maren was very supportive of my desire to hang out with my far-from-home Canadian friends while they were in town.
Speaking of how supportive Maren was, she was an angel through all of the preparations. Not to mention her siblings (thanks, guys!). I tried to make myself useful when it came to wedding prep, but more often than not Maren had taken care of things or was taking care of things. I feel like I put in a fair effort, but the credit definitely goes to Maren and her siblings.
The Monday before the wedding Maren and I had planned to go take some pictures at the temple in our wedding getup in order to save time and stress on the wedding weekend. Since we had our reception before the ceremony, this meant that the day of the ceremony would actually be the third time I saw Maren in her wedding dress (good thing I’m not superstitious!).
Moving on. While Randal and Theresa were in town, my good friend Dan came down from Orange County to hang as well. Thursday and Friday was when everyone else started arriving from out of town: My mom and sisters, my Aunt Mary, Makea Lowry, Andrew and Paige Irwin, Scott Leishman and others. I have to say that having my family and some of my best friends in town for my wedding was one of the best presents I could have hoped for. For most of them it was a significant financial sacrifice to make the trip from Canada or elsewhere and I’m so glad they came!
The other details of the week before the wedding escape me now, but it was a busy week.
Friday was the day of the reception and the day before the wedding ceremony. What a day! Again I don’t remember a lot of the details of the day. I do know that I was lucky enough to get to chill with Makea for a good part of the day before the reception. And then it was time for the reception!
It was so much fun! We had a live oldies band playing swing music while the guests arrived and the receiving line was going on. I had a bag of cream puffs with me in the receiving line to tide me over until I got to eat something real. So many people came! Mostly people that Maren knew. Everyone said how beautiful Maren looked (cause she really did look amazing!) and a couple of people told me that I looked good, too. We had to cut the receiving line short to get on with the program.
There was a special musical number and dance by Maren’s siblings, there were toasts by the moms, and I gave a pretty excellent toast to my bride. Then we cut the cake and started the dance. Lots of people danced, which made it so much more fun. At one point during the dance, in honor of the day when we “fell for each other” (a halloween dance), I donned my halloween rockstar costume and made an appearance on the dance floor. People laughed. It was fun.
Since we weren’t married yet, we were in no hurry to get anywhere after the reception. We stayed till the very end, after which Maren stayed with her Mom and siblings, while I went back to the Bird’s house (where I was staying at the time) with all my groomspeople. We stayed up late hot tubbing and talking. It was great.
And then it was the big day! I was so excited. I was gonna get married! I was gonna look great, Maren was gonna look great, we were going to the temple, I was stoked! Without getting into detail I just want to say how special it was to get married in the temple. It’s such a special place and it made the whole experience that much better for me. I was bursting with happiness the whole time. Lots of smiling going on, for sure.
After the ceremony there were a few more pictures to be taken and then we went off to the luncheon part of the day. We held a ring ceremony for my family who wasn’t able to attend the temple ceremony. I thought it was very nice. And lunch was very nice, too. Ruth was giving everyone massages. I got a lot of positive feedback from my friends about that.
Then the luncheon was over and Maren and I had nothing else to do but get changed and start the honeymoon! Stay tuned…