John and I met exactly one year ago today.

I was just looking back on my posts and I can’t believe that I never posted anything about our wedding!!

Well, it was a wonderful day. I’m glad we did it.

The night before I had a little “batchelorette party” with my bridesmaids. We had a great little slumber party. They helped me calm down, (no one ever told me how stressful it is to get married!) we made crepes, had root beer floats, and maybe watched a movie, I can’t remember. We had decided before to have each bridesmaid choose her own blue dress to wear and let it be a surprise how they turned out. So that night they decided to put their dresses on to see if they looked o.k. together. And RACHEL PARKER pulls this one one me:

“Ok, Michele, here’s my dress, how do you like it?”

Ha ha ha, very funny Rachel.

We all managed to get a good night’s sleep, and in the morning I choked down a little bit of food and relaxed (tried to relax) while they helped me with my hair and my make-up. Then my mom got lost on her way to pick me up and kept calling every few minutes, which was NOT helping with the nerves! Anyway she finally got there and we hurried to the temple. When we got there they told me that I had to sit at the front desk to wait for my groom to arrive. So… I waited for like 30 minutes until he showed up (Ok maybe it was 5 or 10). Anyway, so we had the sealing ceremony and it was really nice. It was so nice to see all my family there, most of whom I hadn’t seen in a long while. And especially my Grandma Bowen. I wasn’t expecting her to be there and it made me so happy to see her.

The old lady temple workers were really nice to me, even though there were like seven other brides in the temple who they also had to look after. And can I just say, to those of you who were waiting for John and I to come out of the temple after the sealing, I was ready to go atLEAST like 20 minutes before him. I swear I was sitting there for EVER waiting for him to get his tux on. J

Anyway, it was a nice overcast day right up until the moment we came out of the temple, when it started pouring. POURING! I’m telling you, it was a monsoon out there. And freezing cold, too. My hair was destroyed almost right away, my dress got wet, and most of the family stayed for one quick group picture, and left.

But I didn’t care, I was so happy. Happy to be married to John, the guy who it seemed was made-to-order just for me and placed right where I would find him one year ago today! (And it was a good thing too, because I was about ready to throw in the marriage towl and go join the Peace Corps or something.)

Anyway, so we didn’t get any good family pictures at the temple, but it’s kind of funny to see all the ladies trying to hold their skirts down and their hair back in the pictures we do have. Luckily my bridesmaids and most of our immediate family members stayed longer, and the storm finally let up enough for us to get some pictures outside under the umbrellas. (I have to give credit to my bridesmaids for buying umbrellas on the way to the temple—no one else thought to do that!) At the very end it even let up enough that we got a few pictures without the umbrellas! Thank goodness.

We had a really awesome family dinner that afternoon and a beautiful reception that was put together by John’s mother and aunts. I was so happy to see all of my relatives and friends, especially the ones who traveled hundreds of miles to be there. I couldn’t believe that I had done something important enough that people would want to come all that way. The only sad part about the wedding day was not getting to spend very much time with any of them.

I think the idea of marriage was still a little daunting to John and I even up until our wedding day. But we knew it was the right thing to do so we just sat back and enjoyed ourselves. Even after we had been married a while one of us would ocassionally look at the other and say, “can you believe we’re married??” On our honeymoon we stopped at a diner in West Yellowstone, and ran into my dad’s cousin Tom and his wife Betsy. I introduced John as my husband and John looked around to see who I was talking about! But now that we have been married for three months it seems a lot more believable. Especially since we have been spending 24 hours a day together for the last several weeks here in Asia. So far we haven’t gotten tired of eachother! But who knows what could happen! Just kidding. J

We are heading back to our homeland on October 1 and John will be starting his job a week or so later. It will be interesting to finally settle into “normal” married life!