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...

Wanna watch it live?

Here we go... down to the final hours before The Wedding. If you're not here, we're sorry you're not sharing in this day with us. But you can still watch the ceremony live! Check it out - 1:00 p.m. Central tomorrow. Here: http://asoundidea.com/garyandmariesa
Enjoy!

The Ceremony on the Interwebs...

For those of you who, for various reasons, are not able to attend The Wedding, we will be live streaming it. It will be at 1:00 p.m. Central on Sunday, link to be provided later. You will need to have the most recent Adobe Flash Player installed on your computer - at least Adobe Flash Player 9. I will need your email addresses ahead of time. Not sure why, I'm just being told to get the email addresses of those who will be watching online ahead of time. More details to follow.
Wish you were going to be here, but happy you can still watch live!

Volunteers Needed!

Come one, come all!
I need help doing the flowers. We will only be putting together a couple of "arrangements" - that is to say "things in vases." I've already created all of the centerpieces, so this will be mostly bouquets and the things the guys wear that I can't spell. Boot-an-ear. I have an appointment at Jones Valley Urban Farm in downtown Birmingham at 1:00 on Saturday afternoon. We had the flowers grown especially for The Wedding, so we will need to choose the flowers, have them cut, and then assemble things. I'm really not very particular about this, so hopefully it will be relatively simple - tape, wrap ribbon, move on to the next. Want to help? I need all the hands I can get. Please shoot me an email or call if you are planning to join us so I know how many people to expect - or if you'll be in from out of town and will need a ride, let me know that too.
Thank you in advance for helping make our wedding weekend even that much more special!
~M

Schedule of Events

Wow! We're less than a week away from the start of The Wedding Weekend! I know everyone from out of town is coming in at different times, so for your planning porpoises ;) here's the schedule of events:

Friday
Dinner at 6:00 for whoever's already in town, or anyone local who wants to attend. Jim & Nick's at Greystone on 280. See Wedding Map for location.

Saturday
Groom's Golf Outing, 7:00 a.m.
Bride's Pamper Outing, (and one-footed pedicure) 9:00 a.m.
Flower cutting and arranging, 1:00 p.m., Jones Valley Urban Farm (Volunteers needed. See next post for more. See Wedding Map for actual location.)
Rehearsal, 4:00 p.m., Vulcan Park
Rehearsal/Family Dinner immediately following, Dreamland, see Wedding Map for location (or follow your nose)
Dessert/Drinks, 7:00-ish, Steele's at the Hilton Perimeter Park (See Wedding Map for location)

Sunday
Ceremony, 1:00 p.m., City Overlook at Vulcan Park
Self-guided tours of Vulcan Park and observation deck just after ceremony
Reception, immediately following, Fleming's at The Summit
After-party - well, afterwards - location TBA

Please take a look at the Wedding Map, it should be quite helpful in getting the lay of the land.

Have questions? Give us a call or shoot us an email.
See you all soon!!!

Getting close, don't forget to RSVP!

We're about 35 days from The Wedding. Whoo hoo! Where has the time gone? I turned the calendar to August this morning and our engagement anniversary is THIS MONTH. Wow. (Hey, that sounds like a reason to have dinner at Fleming's!)

So it's getting close, and we're getting excited. And we hope you are, too. Yesterday we got some RSVPs from people I honestly did not think would be able to make it. So, so, so happy that Newport News and Orlando will be represented! We're just thrilled that so many of you love us enough to make the trip! (We do know there are several of you who love us enough, but you simply can't make it. That's why we'll be live-streaming the ceremony, but we'll talk more about that later, once we get the details worked out.)

Please, please, please, if you haven't already, RSVP now. (Grammar Police: I know that was redundant.) You all know me well enough to know I have to have things just so... and many of you have told me about your plans, but have not RSVPd. If you have any trouble doing it, email me. I know there was one issue so far because I left a hyphen out of a hyphenated name. Chances are if you can't get it to work, it's because I did something silly with your name.

We're working on weekend plans right now, so we can try to actually have some time to spend with you. Several of you have asked what you can help with that weekend, and honestly, right now, there's not much. There is one thing I can think of - if anyone is good with flowers and/or would like to help make arrangements, please let me know. Yes, I went to floral school, I know, I know. I *can* do it myself, but it's a lot of work. Especially since I'll still be skipping around on this boot by then. So, if you want to help, please let me know. No pressure here at all, just let me know if that sounds like something fun to do on Saturday at 1:00 p.m. And as for the rest of you - just come to Birmingham and have fun! And please, for us, take the opportunity to get to know someone you don't see every day. Everyone on the guest list is someone who (whom?) we truly enjoy, and we think you'll find you have much more in common that just the two of us.

See you soon!!!

Bad site - please ignore!

Hey - just wanted to let you all know that there's a wedsite out there for us that's got really, really old information. Those of you who know us well, follow our FB pages, sit down the hall from us - pretty much all of you - know that this information is outdated. (Obviously I'm not running anywhere right now - let alone the Rock N Roll 1/2 Marathon!) Anyway, please ignore our really outdated page at weddingchannel.com. I tried to have it deleted months ago, and, well, there it is...