16 years

Today D and I celebrate 16 years of marriage.

WOW!

(Kate and Will picked a good date :))

It feels like 14 years still because the last two have been a blur.............

With my wedding posts the last two days, and all of your comments (thank you, as always), I got to thinking about our wedding.

D and I knew we were IT for each other about two weeks after we started going out.

I know it's hard to believe but I was a very stroppy person when I was younger.

If I didn't like something about a guy, that was it - off with him.

Terrible now that I think about it.

You all know the story about how we met.

Well, at the time I was going out with my one other serious boyfriend at the time. We'd started going out when I was 15, through the last two years of school and then a bit of university.

After we broke up, I had a 3-month fling with V which is another story altogether (can you believe we're FB friends now?!) and after that I said, "no more boys! I'm done until I turn 30".

I don't know where 30 came from - sounded like a good number and I was going to be a high-powered career woman with no time for boys.

You know how that goes though... when you say "no more _________" that's exactly what you get.

And D and I got together and serious FAST, but such bad timing - 6 weeks before exams.

Anyway, back to the wedding.

We wanted to get married a lot sooner but my mother didn't think it a good idea to just marry as I was young.

Eventually after a year, I wore her down, she signed the consent forms (I was under 21) and a month later we were married.

I was planning to buy a white suit from Edgars to get married in which nearly sent my mother over the edge and so I "allowed" my gran to make me a very plain and simple white dress.

I seriously didn't give two hoots about anything but who was marrying us and that we were getting married!

We did pray very seriously about who should marry us and our pastor's wife did the honours. It was a beautiful but very simple ceremony.

No entourage as I wanted all the attention to be on us.

My Dad walked me down the aisle, handed me to D and it was just the two of us before God and some family and friends (less than 50).

Perfect.

My hairdresser told me that I was the calmest bride she'd ever seen and I said something like, "what is there to be nervous about? I have absolutely no doubts about doing this"

We didn't have a professional photographer, formal reception (went to D's mom's house afterwards), formal flowers, cake, nothing.

My granny did me a bouquet, D's sister's boyfriend at the time (she had about 6 in the last 13 years) made our cake and my gran and the mothers made all the food.

Very casual.

The only thing I would do differently if I had to do it all again is have a photographer.

The rest was PERFECT for us.

Actually, I'm lying a bit. I would get married on the beach in a white flowing dress with a photographer but other than that, I would not change a thing.

D and I fit each other so well - I can think of a million things I love about him and since we've had the babies, I love him more.

I always knew he'd be a good father but I didn't know he'd be THIS good :) (I told him that today and he agrees with me!!!)

He gets me like no-one else on earth, can give me one look and I know what he's thinking and we really are very good together.

I think what makes our marriage good is that we truly are best friends and talk about everything. When he's down, I'm up; when I'm down, he's up. We have each other's back, and say it's us against the world!

Happy 16-year anniversary, D.

I love you so very much!

What would you change about your wedding day?

I obviously got married in the olden days of no digital camera so I don't have any pics to show you but picture a verrrrrrrrry young D & M :)

P.S. I had 332 posts in my Google Reader. I'm so tempted to just click "mark all as read" but I don't want to miss out.