Forever's A Given: Our Wedding

So after blogging about the Ishley wedding I decided it was about time I blogged about my own wedding. As many of you already know, Justin and I have had a whirlwind romance. We met on July 28th and were married just 5 months and 3 days later on New Year's Eve 2010. One of our favorite songs that reminds us of eachother and how rapidly we fell in love is "Why Wait" by Rascal Flatts. If you haven't heard it then find it, it's a great song. That's also where the title of this blog came from. One of the lines in the song is "...ain't like it ain't gonna happen, forever's a given, it's already written, who we kiddin' baby come on." If you listen to the song you'll see it fits us perfectly!

I'm sure you're expecting some romantic story about how Justin got down on one knee and held the perfect ring up and proposed but, that's not what you're gonna hear. You're gonna hear the true story and it's a hell of lot more romantic than that! Now I know you've already heard the short version, so here's the whole story of how we decided to get married...

One night in mid November we were sitting on the couch discussing and dreaming about our future, you know...big wedding, bigger house, and more kids. We knew that realistically, these dreams couldn't come true anytime soon but we were certain we wanted to be together all the time. Moving in together seemed like a good idea but it just didn't seem like enough. Justin said that if he could he would go out and buy me a dream ring right then and there and we'd have a huge wedding but on our budget that just wasn't possible. He also said that he'd be just as happy going down to the court house and getting married. I knew I didn't want that.

The next day I thought and thought about it and decided that there really wasn't any reason we couldn't get married. I talked about it with my best friend Sam and she agreed that if we both wanted to, there was no reason we shouldn't. Now we just had to figure out the minor details like when, where, and how. I quickly decided that New Year's Eve would be perfect because there's already a party atmosphere in the air. The next thing to decide was the venue. Where can you get married that's beautiful, cheap, and needs minimal decoration? Park Avenue Chain of Parks! It's already lit up with white lights for the Christmas season, it's public (free), beautiful, and already decorated. Dinner was also easy to decide, Marie Livingston's Steakhouse made for the perfect reception. Luckily, Justin's dad is a minister so he could marry us. Now we just needed wedding bands. Justin's parents kindly gave us his mom's anniversary band and it is gorgeous (I get compliments on it all the time). The only thing left was Justin's ring and it wasn't hard to find one we both loved. Everything literally just fell into place.

It really wasn't a big production. There weren't any formal invitations, no wedding party, no D.J, and no walking down the aisle. There was friends, family, a photographer (my sister in-law), flowers, cake (made by me), and the two of us. It was all we needed and it truly was perfect!

I'll quick talking now and let some of my favorite pictures tell the story...