Happy 9th Anniversary Beloved!

Today is our 9th wedding anniversary! It's amazing to think all that has happened in nine years! (In September it will be 12 years since our first date). So, I wanted to take time to share some pictures with you. I have divided them up into groups: our engagement and our wedding.  (this is a repost from a couple years ago)

I will first tell the story of our engagement. We had been together for 8 1/2 months when Hubby asked for my hand. And boy...was the proposal a good one. I had many friends jealous over this. That summer I was babysitting for 3 children and when I returned home from work I came home to an apartment filled (and I do mean FILLED!) with streamers and balloons. I think I had about a hundred balloons in my apartment and streamers were everywhere.

On the table were a dozen yellow roses (one of my utmost favorites) and a box. What was inside that box you say......It was a gorgeous black dress that he picked out for me and instructions to put on the dress and meet him at the place of our first meeting (we met on my college campus at Sonfest which is a Christian Concert type of event).

Anyway...I put on the dress and drove over to the college. Down in the grove there is a crick that has a bridge and on the bridge were more balloons and a note. That note had instructions to put on a blindfold. (Can you see the balloons on the bridge?)

Before I could put the blindfold on, a jogger came running by and said, "Am I interrupting?" So I put on the blindfold and I hear music playing and I hear hubby (well...boyfriend at the time) reading a poem to me that he had written. Then he had me take off the blindfold and asked me to marry him. I think I got my yes in there I was crying so hard. After this we went to his parents home and called my parents. Then it was off to a very nice restaurant called the Granville Inn. It was wonderful. It was a very beautiful place that I had never been to before. So anyway...that is my engagement story and now here are some of our "official" engagement pictures. Note that the black dress I am wearing is the one he gave to me the day he proposed.

Now...onto our wedding. We were married on July 13, 2002 (obvious I guess....) I graduated from college the end of May so I had a busy summer. Besides our wedding I think we had 4 or 5 others to go to. My friend from high school got married one week after us so we actually cut our honeymoon short a couple of days to make it back in time for hers. We got married in the town we live in now. The wedding was at the First Baptist Church and had our wedding reception at the Dan Emmett Conference Center . In this picture we are having a time of prayer after lighting the unity candle. You can see one candle in the lower left hand corner. All of our guests had candles and after we lit our candle we "passed on" the flame to the ushers who then passed the light on to the guests. It was such a beautiful sight. =)

Funny thing is...well maybe not funny...more like depressing....is that neither one of us can wear our rings. Never thought I would have to think about loosing weight in my fingers! ;)

Here is the nifty car we had the privilege of riding away in. Our friend hadn't even had the car for a month!

I just had to show a picture of our cake. This was one of my favorite things. It tasted wonderful too! (even a year later.)

Thanks for looking at my post today. Sorry it was so long but I would have loved to share more pictures. Actually if I can find one I will show a picture of my parent's wedding sometime. Why? Because the dress I wore belonged to my Mother. Blessings to all on this wonderful day!