Wedding weekend: part 4

Right now I'm trying to take advantage of our final summer days so when I got home last night I went to the fridge for the quintessential summer evening beverage only to find my new husband had removed all of the beer from the fridge and put it in the warm garage. grrrrr. Fortunately, I had some nice Oregon wines in the rack so I tested out one of our new wine glasses (a nice wedding gift) while relaxing on the back deck watching the cat and dog play in the yard. I had a very profound thought: Marshall is no longer a puppy and he needs a jaunty neck scarf ASAP! So my new goal is to find the perfect bandana for our little man. All I can say is what triathlon goals? I'm over it! ANYWAY!

These photos were taken by my mom, I'll put better photos up when we receive them.

Of course our wedding day is mostly a blur, but here is what I remember: before I was able to get dressed or brush my teeth, I had to call Bill 3 times about 3 different things he needed to do and he wasn't answering his phone. Finally he called me back and I was able to get some last minute work done on the wedding before going upstairs to shower and lock myself in my room until show time.

Meanwhile, Bill went for a trail run with friends and two of his brothers and then had a beer before he got dressed for the wedding (oh to be the groom!) I forgot to mention that Friday he got up before sunrise and went for a 16 mile run, then he took his brother and sister in law to master's swim at noon, and then played 18 holes of disc golf. It was hard to get his brain to function after all that (grin) but I'm sure he wouldn't change a thing.

My sister did my hair and I tried to be patient while she curled and pinned until my hair looked way nicer than what I had dreamed. Melissa was on hand to take photos and Sarah was there to sew my special bra into my dress at the last minute. We had a joke amongst the girls that I should throw my bra instead of my bouquet since they all wanted the bra way more (it was a special purchase from Victoria's Secret) More than you want to know, but hey, this is my blog and I think its funny!

I could look down into the back yard from my window on the people arriving and everyone seemed to be trying to stay out of the sun. It was forecast to be 96 degrees (in Oregon in September!) and there is no shade in our yard so we needed to get the ceremony started. Our friend Eric, a local musician and coworker at the university, was our musician and he played acoustic guitar which I could hear from my room. The processional began but our flower girl (age 3) and ring bearer (age 2) didn't walk but ran down the aisle (separately). Poor babies! They were cute though!

As I started down the aisle I noticed Bill was standing on the wrong side, he decided he wanted to see me coming and threw protocol to the wind. He whispered to me that I looked beautiful and Even (old Griz) got the ceremony started. He did a great job speaking, having memorized the entire first part of the ceremony we had written, then Sarah got up and did a reading from The Velveteen Rabbit that was very touching. Next we exchanged vows and rings and my sister Alyson got up and read the Apache Wedding Blessing.

A few nice comments and bam! Bill and Erika are now wed. HOOO-RAAAHHH! We did a quick greeting line and took some photos in our back yard before heading off to the reception which I will write about tomorrow. Hopefully I will have more photos for you to see, my mom did a fine job taking these but they are pretty far away.