Black Saturday

While we were on vacation, Disgruntled Husband and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary.

Well, celebrated is stretching it. We definitely had our anniversary and went out to dinner and came back to an almost-tropical location, overlooking the beautiful Atlantic Ocean.

With our kids.

DH and I count on going out to dinner alone three times a year: both of our birthdays, and our anniversary. But since the state of South Carolina frowns upon leaving three kids in a hotel condo alone, we took them with us.

I broke up three fights, handled two crying bouts and took people to the bathroom four times.

Just like on my wedding day.

On the day of our wedding, one of my maids of honor (I had two...ESM and Janie) and I got up and went to get our hair done. After that, we went to the reception hall where I saw my Uncle John and cousins doing things my mom told them to helping out with last minute touches. Then we went to the church to get ready.

And discovered the church was locked.

While another friend and I tried to figure out which tree would provide me with the most privacy, the pastor that married us arrived and unlocked the door.

As far as wedding days go, mine went pretty smoothly. I wish for blogging and entertaining purposes I could tell a funny story about my day, but there really weren't any.

(Unless you count Marzana and the reception hall...more on that later.)

One of my favorite moments though was before the ceremony started and my cousin Staci had come down to say hi. She saw my mom and immediately said, "Aunt [...]!" and gave her a big hug. My parents are divorced and Staci is from my dad's side of the family.

Smiling because we were too dumb to know what was ahead of us.

When we were all legal and stuff and went to the reception hall (which is now a Korean Church), we saw our last name was misspelled. And we get into the ballroom and find problems with the seating chart.

(The seating chart that took me 2 days and several Excedrin to figure out. It's like an algebra problem. On meth.)

It was because they hadn't used the most recent version of my seating chart, which would have been fine, but Marzana, the director was yelling at me. (Note to any reception hall directors, if you have a problem with a seating chart, find someone else to work it out besides the BRIDE.)

Finally, I bust out my most impressive wedding phrase to date. With hand gestures and crazy eyes, I tell Marzana, "You see this dress?!" Implying, amongst other things, that perhaps she should find someone else to deal with this, and at the same time, "my day" was to be done to my specifications.

(I really don't think I was a bridezilla, but don't F with me at my own reception.)

And after that, Marzana was fine. Though she may have actually found someone else to yell at, I really don't know.

We had crappy food, funny toasts, and lots of dancing. At the end of the night, my friend Stephen said to me, "I've never been to a wedding at night before, and now I wonder why people even have them in the daytime!"

As far as anniversary celebrations go, our dinner for five wasn't the worst way to go. Our first anniversary we at lobster and stale wedding cake at home, with our 6-day-old son. Our second anniversary, after driving to the middle of nowhere, we discover that the restaurant DH wanted to surprise me with was closed. Our third anniversary we got to go to dinner because we had received an insurance distribution check in the mail that day. It was supposed to pay a doctor. It paid for dinner.

After that, it's a bit fuzzy. Although I do know that last year, we spent our anniversary "dinner" at Sunday School sign-up instead of at a restaurant.

Happy 10th Anniversary, DH. I only had 6 years in the pool. ;)