*I am reposting this from 2008, with a few updates.   This was such a fun Meme!  

Awhile back I saw this Marriage Meme on someone’s blog and I thought it would be fun to do for our Anniversary this year. Here are my answers:

1. Where/How did you meet? We first met at a youth group meeting I attended while home for Christmas break from Christendom College. He was there helping out that night. We were reintroduced by my parents the following summer.

2. How long have you known each other? almost 14 years

3. How long after you met did you start dating? We went on our first (official) date one year later, on January 31st, Super Bowl Sunday. My parents did invite him out with us, a couple weeks prior, for my 21st birthday.

4. How long did you date before you were engaged? Not long, it was only three months! 🙂 After we had been dating 2 months, I prayed a novena to St. Therese to send me a rose if he was the man I was suppose to marry, since I had a feeling he was. On March 17th, the last day of my nine day novena, I opened my apartment door to find a single red rose sitting on my doorstep from hubby. It was the very first time he had given me flowers and he had no idea about my novena!

5. How long was your engagement? Not quite six months.  We were engaged on April 24th and married on October 2nd.

6. Did you have a bridal shower? My friend Trina drove 11 hours to give me a wonderful bridal shower!

7. What was your favorite Bridal Shower gift? This is an easy one!! My Aunt Bridget gave me Our Wedding Anniversary Memory Book, which we pull out every year and just LOVE! I love it so much that a few years back I bought a Christmas Memories Book as well. Thank you again Auntie B!

8. How long have you been married? It has been 12 years today! Happy Anniversary my love!

9. How old were you when you got married? I was 21 and hubby was 26.

10. What is your anniversary? We had hoped to marry on either October 1st or October 3rd (the new or traditional feast of St. Therese) but our parish only allowed weddings on Saturdays at the time, so we were married right in between on October 2nd, the Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels.

11. Where was your wedding? Inside a beautiful Roman Catholic Church.

12. Did your spouse cry during the ceremony? I think he teared up. ; )

13. How many people came to your wedding? Approx 350

14. What kind of flowers did you have at your wedding?

The flowers were a gift from a friend of mine. I wasn’t picky at all, except when it came to my bouquet. I had seen a picture in a Martha Stewart magazine and asked the florist to recreate it… It was perfect!

15. Describe your wedding dress. I am going to skip this one, since I think I have posted enough pictures for you to see it… It did have a nice long train which you can’t see in the pictures, and I loved all the bead work on the front. For some reason it doesn’t look as pretty in the photos.

16. How many people were in your wedding party? Best man, maid of honor, five bridesmaids, five groomsmen, ring bearer and three flower girls. (I also had two more of my brothers serve the Mass, and Hubby’s oldest brother did the readings — he was in the seminary at the time and could not be a groomsman– we did our best to have all (15) of our siblings in the wedding. My two youngest brothers were the only ones not in the wedding party… They were in the picture though!) I could have kept going too… I had a few friends that I really wish I could have had as bridesmaids as well.

17. Are you still friends with them all? Yes, although we have not stayed in touch (other than Christmas Cards) with 2 of the groomsman, and one of my bridesmaids — we did attend her wedding last October though! In fact, one of the groomsman ended up marring my younger sister/maid of honor. The photographer even ended up positioning them next to each other for pictures! (They are just to the right of me in the above picture.)

*Since I first wrote that in 2008, we have started seeing one of those 2 groomsman a little more often, and he and his sweet wife are our little Rose’s Godparents!  

18. Are your wedding bands engraved? No, but they were blessed again this past summer by our best man, who is now a priest!

*I now have a gorgeous updated wedding set that was a gift from my husband on our 10th Anniversary. 

19. What did you dance your first dance to? I could Not Ask For More by Edwin McCain.

20. What kind of cake did you serve? Each tier was a different kind: Chocolate, Marble, White with Strawberry filling, White with Chocolate filling. We went with a simple design and extra sheet cakes to help keep it affordable, but it was SOOO YUMMY!

21. What did you serve for your meal? The Catholic Daughters catered, and I really can’t remember exactly what was served… Isn’t that awful!

22. Most special moment of your wedding day? The moment when the priest said “I now pronounce you Man and Wife.”

23. Any funny moments? I loved seeing my father-in-law, brother-in-law, and grandfather doing the hokey pokey.

Everyone also laughed at this same bil’s toast… It was a quote from a movie my hubby and his brothers love. It went something like “Marriage. This responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton!! It bends them, and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there’s nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage.” Or something like that… You had to be there, it was pretty funny!

24. Any big disasters? Well… About a month before the wedding, my soon-to-be hubby was sent on a 21 day fire assignment. Right before he left he asked me to take the Marriage license to the priest. Well, what I needed to do was take it to the courthouse and have it validated and then take it to the priest… I didn’t realize that, and no one caught the mistake. When we arrived home from our honeymoon we had a message from Father asking us to call him. He said that we were validly married in the church and the eyes of God, but that the state wouldn’t recognize the marriage. We headed down to the courthouse and sure enough, they would not recognize our wedding ceremony as legally binding. I couldn’t believe it. We then had to validate a new marriage license and then “wait 3 days” in which time hubby had been dispatched on another 21 day assignment to another fire. During that time I visited him on the fire and since it was close to Reno, we joked about heading there to “get married”… After the assignment was over we renewed our vows with a couple witnesses once again. So, although today is the anniversary of our marriage, our legal anniversary is not until sometime in November. I bet that will be confusing to some descendant of ours trying to peace together their family tree many years from now!

25. If you were to do your wedding over, what would you change? It was perfect, but there are two things I would change… Although I loved my dress, I wish that I would have chosen one with sleeves.  I also wish I would have asked my favorite auntie to be a bridesmaid.  An official marriage license would have been nice too! 😉

*I also wish we would have purchased more of the pictures… I contacted our photographer this past year to ask about purchasing more, or buying the negatives, and he no longer has them.  They had said they would contact us before getting rid of them, but they never did… 

26. Do you have a favorite wedding gift? Yes, lots of favorites, actually! One that stands out particularly in my mind is the beautiful Pieta statue carved by Santini that was a gift from one of our groomsmen… (The groomsman that, shortly after the wedding, started dating and then married my sis!) It is absolutely beautiful.

*You can see a picture of it at the bottom of this post.  

27. Where did you go on your honeymoon? We went on a cruise to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

28. How long were you gone? Just over a week.

29. Greatest challenge as a couple? Finding time to talk to each other, just the two of us… (As well as finding babysitters!)

30. Greatest strength as a couple? Our Catholic Faith.

I so enjoyed being reminded of all these wonderful memories through doing this meme! Have a great day, I will see you all sometime tomorrow.