A milestone reached!

This last Friday (July 3rd), Paul and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary. I know I already blogged about us actually celebrating it on our cruise 2 months ago, but I do need to acknowledge the passing of the actual date! Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to figure out how to scan some of our wedding pictures with our new printer, but once I do, I'll post some pictures of that day.

Our wedding day was wonderful! It wasn't glamorous or fancy in any way, but it was perfect for what we needed it to be. I am a lot of things, but fussy is not one of them. Basically, in planning my wedding, I went with a theme centered around INEXPENSIVE and SIMPLE! My parents gave me a budget to work with, we figured out how much an inexpensive honeymoon cruise would cost, subtracted that amount, and then worked with the rest. Good thing temple wedding ceremonies are free (well, except for the tithing part)!

We got married in the Logan, Utah temple. I love this beautiful building. I'm so thankful that Paul and I had made the choice early in life to marry in the temple. We were surrounded by family and our best friends. So many people came to support us, many of whom I didn't know at the time, but have grown to love them as much as my own family over the years. Our wedding ceremony was in the morning, followed immediately by pictures. After that, we had our wedding luncheon at the Bluebird restaurant on Main Street (I'll freak out if that place ever closes down!). I remember listening to words of advice collected from the different tables and Paul and I sang a song together... cuz we're cheesy that way! Looking back, we should have at least picked a better song, but oh well!

My immediate family had scheduled family pictures with our photographer in the afternoon since it had been the first time we were all together in a really long time. After we finished with that, we headed over to my Uncle Milton's beautiful home in Millville. We held our reception in their backyard, and enjoyed the nice summer evening overlooking Cache Valley. The reception wasn't very well attended due to the holiday weekend situation, but it was nice that we didn't really have a "line" to speak of. Paul's Aunt Marilyn and 3 of her children played a string quartet for us and there was lots of yummy food. Our reception was a little atypical in that I never threw my bouquet and we didn't have a wedding cake. Well, there was yummy cake, but it wasn't a wedding cake. My siblings enjoyed that cake for some time after we'd left on the honeymoon! Our car was decorated/vandalized with plenty of marshmallows, cookies, and other sticky things (something I admit to having a really bad attitude about at the time - because the last thing you want to do leaving your wedding reception is to HAVE to spend 20 min at the car wash - maybe I'm still a little bitter!). Anyway, the only thing I regret about the reception is that we opened the gifts we received that night before we left. THAT was a very dumb thing to do! Ah well. Can't do anything about that now!

We finally left the reception around 10:30 and (after the car wash) headed off to the Sherwood Hills hotel in Sardine Canyon. Can't remember why exactly, but the room that was reserved for us wasn't available, so we got to stay in one of their themed rooms... the Blue Bayou room to be exact! The scary blue-walled room had the bed sitting on a Tom Sawyer-type raft right next to a monstrous fish tank! Anyway, I won't go into anymore details of the evening, but thought the ridiculousness of the room should be mentioned. Needless to say, it added an extra flair to the memorable evening!

Ultimately, the wedding and the celebration itself wasn't anything remotely resembling a bridal magazine affair, but at the end of the day, I was married to my sweetheart. And that's all that really mattered... then AND now. Life is all about choices. Ten years ago, I can honestly say, I made the best choice of my life in choosing to be Paul Croshaw's bride. It's a decision I have never regretted and work hard so that he never will either. Happy 10 years, sweetie! I sure love you!