We did it!
Well - we did it. Emmett and I are husband and wife. I don't think it's still sunk in completely. What a couple of years it has been - so many ups and downs it's hard to believe that it's brought us here.
I guess that's the thing about hard times - the suffering makes you really appreciate the happy times.
Life is good -- wonderfully good and endlessly interesting.
The wedding was an incredible success. It exceeded all expectations by so much, I still can't believe it. I have led a charmed life and always had a great family and felt loved, but never like I did at this wedding. I can honestly say that I have never felt so surrounded by love. I guess that's part of having it in Lake Tahoe - there wasn't anyone there that didn't *really* want to be there - it's too much trouble to plan (everything books up so fast in the summer) and too expensive for people to come on a whim. Even so, we ended up with about 90 people there and that really surprised us - we didn't expect that so many people would be there. A wonderful surprise. So many members of Emmett's family made the trip, his grandmother, all of his sisters and their children (including his sister and her family from Vancouver, another one from Northern California) and friends from as far away as Idaho and Texas. On my side, it was so touching how many people went to so much trouble to be there - 6 out 7 cousins on my Dad's side flew in for the wedding, 2 aunts, my parents (of course), and my 92-year-old Grandmother managed to get on a plane and come (with a little help from my cousin Blake)! And then there was my surrogate family who not only showed up but all participated in some way - Eric was the music coordinator/DJ, Heidi and Sara were wedding coordinators (and boy did we need them!), Deb was a bridesmaid, Christian and Henry paddled me in (yes, it's as crazy as it sounds, but more on that later) and Henry also read the Irish Wedding Blessing during the ceremony.
Everything was truly magical. Things that could have gone wrong didn't (for a change haha) and in fact often were replaced with things that turned out BETTER. All the people that we met in Lake Tahoe were so incredibly nice that I felt like I was back in the midwest. The house that we rented was INCREDIBLE and everyone just really seemed to enjoy each other - people who hadn't ever met or people who hadn't seen each other in years all got along so well - it really felt special and charmed - to a degree that was almost eerie.
