Hopefully by now, if you weren't here, you've had a chance to watch the video of the ceremony. Unfortunately, you can't hear much of it, and some things aren't entirely clear. So here are the answers to a few questions we've received from online guests...
The precious boys in blue are Gary's nephews. You may remember that we had originally planned to get married on the beach, and that Gary proposed to me on the sand at Virginia Beach. His sister scooped up some sand when we were there last spring and sent it to me. (I still get made fun of at work for getting a box full of sand in the mail.) The "sandmen" are spreading the sand from Virginia Beach so we could - sort of - get married on the beach.
Here's the story on the flowers, so you know that we didn't originally intend for Gary to wear a sunflower "the size of a satellite dish" on his lapel. We got the flowers from Jones Valley Urban Farm in Birmingham. It was important to us to buy fresh and buy local. On Saturday, my mom, stepmom, sisters-in-law, a few other wonderful and wonderfully talented ladies and I went to the farm. The fabulous folks at JVUF cut us a ton of flowers, and then turned us loose with clippers to cut whatever we wanted. So everyone made arrangments, corsages, boot-an-ears, etc., and we also took a ginormous bucket of other cut stuff - just in case anything wilted. Well, some did. At the last minute, we had the weekend coordinator Tabitha Hanner making new bouquets for my entourage out of the extra sunflowers. Gary's back-up boot-an-ear was also a sunflower, because I wanted it to match my bouquet. So, he wore that enormous sunflower. He was sweet enough to wear it for me, so I thought I could at least explain that a big yellow flower was not his choice. And, no, it did not shoot water like a clown flower.
I know unless you were standing pretty close to us, you weren't able to hear our vows. (Although you were able to hear one of the video guys say "She'll kill him" when the judge mispronounced my name. He did correct himself, and only did it once, by the way.) So, anyway, you weren't able to hear our vows, so here they are (or at least what we had planned to say - some things were ad-libbed and well, I forgot part of mine.):

He said:
Little did I know that curly girl I met 7 years ago would one day become my wife.
Our life together has been full of love and laughter... fun and frustration... and help, hope and healing. And I wouldn't have wanted to experience it with anyone else.
You make my good days better and my bad days more tolerable.
Today as we stand here, before family and friends, I offer you my life and my love. And as we take our next steps in this journey, trust me to care for you, protect you and to love you as we become one - one heart, one soul... for the rest of our days.

She said:
For years I prayed that God would put someone in my path whom I could love wholly and completely - and who would love me back.For years, I had no idea I was already spending every day with him. Gary, you are the most amazing man I have ever met. You are caring and courteous, brave and brilliant, gentle and generous. It is a joy and comfort to spend my days and my life with you. I am so blessed. And I truly am the luckiest girl in the world. I love you so wholly and so completely. And you love me back.
We have already been through sickness and health. Through richer and poorer, and better and worse. We know we can make it through that. So today, I promise you that I will always be good to you, I will always take care of you, I will always be here for you. I will pray for you, and I will pray with you. I will listen patiently and laugh quickly. I will believe in you and I will believe in us. I will celebrate your triumphs and support you through tears. And I will put aside my pride and trust you enough to share all of myself with you.
Mostly, I will remember that our marriage is a work in progress. I cannot expect perfection neither from you, nor from myself. I come into this with an open heart, and an open mind, and I know that together, we can make it through anything.

That's all for now. Stay tuned, there's still more funny stuff to come...