Five Years Ago

Five years ago today, the Mister and I were at the hitchin' post.

The Mister hates to have his picture online but you can see me about to break out into the ugly cry in this shot. He was wearing his late grandfather's pinstriped suit and just like Doris Day said in the movie Calamity Jane, I was wearing my "frilled-up, flirtin', man-rustlin' petticoat" crinoline in bright red as my "something new". 

It was a beautiful Fall day just like today and he played the wedding march on accordion as I came down the aisle.
 

 
Well, I say "aisle" but it was just a green lawn!  We had a small wedding with only ten guests. With he and I both being the shy type, it was just perfect. We threw our own wedding so that we could keep things thrifty.

We had it planned so that when the preacher pronounced us husband and wife, a friend of ours would cue up the Victrola and one of our favorite songs would play.


Which of course went awry. We were having our first kiss as man and wife and the song started. But wouldn't you know that the victrola hadn't been cranked enough?



Before we could even complete the kiss, the record wound down and was kind of like, "Iiiiiiim braaaaanddddding myyyyyyy daaaaaaarliiiinnnnn...." and then went dead. Then the Mister ran over and cranked it up and came back so that we could recreate our first kiss. We all had a good laugh over that one! Oh, the best laid plans.

Oh, and our preacher was late to our wedding! Everyone was sitting outside in the direct sun waiting and I was nervously pacing in the house when he called saying that he was lost. And hello, he actually lived in that town! We had wanted to get a friend dressed in a bear suit to marry us and after that, we regretted scrapping the idea. A bear in the hand is worth two preachers lost in the bush.


I got a florist at home to make my bouquet and I carried it with me. My wedding dress came from eBay and oh what a mess. When it arrived, it was absolutely coated in nicotine. It wasn't white at all but a putrid shade of yellow. Oh, and the smell! I sat down and cried when I pulled it out of the box. I ended up finding an amazing cleaner here in town who got it spotless for me. And the good news was that the Seller refunded all of my money - so my wedding dress was free! Yee Haw! 

We rented a house way up on top of Lookout Mountain (about three hours from home) just up the road from Rock City and it was both the site of our night-before party, our wedding and the reception. Oh, and it was also our honeymoon cottage! I told you - thrifty. We had never seen the place in person before we went there for our wedding and were thoroughly relieved when we drove up.

It was so beautiful and had this big porch on the front where we all hung out each night. And even though it was Fall, all of the flowers were still brightly in bloom and the grass was like lush green velvet. We got really lucky. Our plan had been that we'd come back there every year for our anniversary but it never happened because the rental company sold the house the very next year.
So, every time that we go back up there, we ride past and stalk the house. Very romantic. 

When our guests came in the night before, some of them stayed with us to save money. I made an enormous pot of soup and these monsters made out of biscuits. Or maybe they're snakes.


Which makes me laugh now. We had seen these guys in a recipe book on Halloween treats at the register as we were buying the supplies for our soup and just had to make them! When I watch that TLC show where brides rate each others' weddings, I often wonder what they'd think about the Biscuit Monsters. I'm sure they'd find them incredibly droll but in all actuality, they were delicious! Their innards were made of delicious cheddar cheese. Yum!

We had really great food at the wedding. We got a cafe up the road to cater lots of sandwiches and salads for us and had a picnic on the lawn of the house.



My Mom brought a bunch of her quilts from home in South Carolina. She also brought pretty much every vintage table cloth that you see in these photos. And she let me pick out a quilt to keep as our " wedding quilt ". Everything but the chairs at our wedding either came from my house or my Mom's house. Finally our vintage hoards came in handy!

She also made our wedding cake - a homemade coconut one.

I can't believe that I asked her to lug a cake up from South Carolina - but her coconut cakes are legendarily delicious!  She also made those truffles down front and my sister-in-law brought amazing red velvet cupcakes. My new mother-in-law made sugar cookies shaped like hearts and wedding bells from cookie cutters that had belonged to her Mom. She brought those all the way from Kansas by car.  I tell you, there is nothing like having great cooks in the family. We had food coming in from everywhere! The wedding topper was found on eBay. There are SO many on eBay. It's seriously hard to choose if you're in the market.

Since gnomes are a huge part of Rock City, the Mister and I personalized gnomes for each guest and also gave gifts of boxes of regional chocolates like goo-goo clusters and moon pies. Fancy! 

Did you know that Jones Soda will put any photo on bottles of soda for you? 

We saved a bottle to have with our anniversary wedding cake a year later.

Then we headed further up the hill to Rock City and took photos and explored the park. 

I love this shot from one of the caves. 

We had our friend, Libby take photos at the wedding and also brought our laptop and borrowed all of our guests' camera cards on that last night and stole their photos too. Talk about super cheap wedding pictures! -  and it was fun to see photos of the event from each guests' points of view. 

Rock City was actually where we fell in love way back in 2004 so we knew that we had to have our wedding up there. Here is a shot from that first day that we ever went there.  I think that was our third date. 

Look at those young punks!  

When we met, he had bleached his hair the color of a baby chick and gah, I can't even tell what color mine was. Something with "cherry" in the name, I'm sure. I remember that it was a ridiculously hot day in July and he had no air conditioning in his car. We got stuck for hours behind a wreck on the interstate and as it was the only way home and we were melting, he finally drove the wrong way up the exit ramp (I know, totally uncool...I told you - punks!) and we hung out at a Western Sizzlin' salad bar, bought tons of fireworks and sat in a field watching goats.  Oh, the heart wants what the heart wants. Our love potion was in part goat smell, croutons and those fireworks where flames shoot out of paper chickens' butts.

Anyway, I've overshared enough. I'm sure y'all feel like you're trapped in someone's living room and being forced to watch their vacation slides. Anyhoo, here's to my hubs! 

Who is quite obviously the one for me. 

I'll leave you with our wedding song as it should have been played.  This one goes out to my honey. And to all you young lovers and long-timed together couples out there. And heck, to those of you who are even moderately interested in pitchin' woo. This is the song for you.

Until next time,

x's and o's,

Eartha