...9.11.10...
Two years ago yesterday, Patrick and I recited our vows in front of about 100 guests. Our wedding was perfect in some ways and a total disaster in others. Since yesterday was a bit of a crazy day in the Watson household, I've spent a lot of quiet time this morning reflecting on the past two years of marriage and our three years as a couple, and I decided I'd blog, so here goes.
Suffice it to say that I don't have the best taste in men when left to my own devices. Of course it took me years to figure this out. It finally hit me one summer when I was, once again, chasing after someone who was a bit of a free spirit. I can't help it. I love male versions of me. I guess that makes me a narcissist, but hey, we all have our ideosyncracies. Since my very first semester of college when I was still naive and stupid, I have loved outgoing, over the top, center-of-attention guys. However, this creates an issue because this kind of man is often not interested in serious relationships, and I am by no means a hoochie trick. So, alas, many a relationship of mine failed to thrive before it even really got started. After repeating this pattern time after time, it finally hit me: I need to look elsewhere for a relationship because I suck at picking out my own boyfriends. Enter eHarmony. As I was completing my ridiculously long questionnaire designed to reveal my innermost wants and desires, I thought to myself, "Am I really doing this? Am I going to be one of those people?" But then an image of every male I'd ever liked, dated, kissed, chased, or even had romantic notions toward flashed through my consciousness, and I gladly clicked through all bagillion pages of the questionnaire and posted witty quips and interesting facts about myself on my online profile page.
It took a few weeks for the whole eHarmony thing to really impress me. They only send you five matches a week, and most of mine were too old, too young, too far away, too meh. Then one day I saw a cute teacher from Shelby in my matches and my interest was piqued. "I'll let him contact me first," I thought to myself. You know, let's be old-fashioned on this new-fangled online dating site. Makes sense, right? Well, patience is not one of the fruits of the spirit with which I have been blessed, so after nary a peep from him, I made the first move a few days later. Of course Patrick couldn't resist my well-written emails, so we soon began calling each other. I looked forward to our evening conversations every day and even leaped over grocery bags, ottomans, shoes, you name it, in an attempt to get to my phone as quickly as possible when I knew it was him calling me. We made our first real date for August 4th, 2009. I let him pick the restaurant...and he picked Chili's in Gastonia. He'll kill me for writing that, but I thought to myself, "OH GAH. Everything's been going so well up to this point, and THIS is where he wants us to go on our first date!?" But my good sense prevailed, and I decided to give the date a chance, and I'm so glad I did.
Sometimes you can pinpoint the moment you fall in love with someone, and I know exactly when I fell in love with Patrick. In our many pre-first-date conversations, we talked about common interests, hobbies, all that mushy getting-to-know-you crap. Being English teachers, we both loved to read. I told Patrick that one of my all-time favorite books was I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak, and he in turn said that his recent favorite was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. On our first date Patrick informed me that he'd bought and been reading I Am the Messenger because he knew I loved it. I thought that was so sweet! I told him that I hadn't read The Curious Incident yet, but I really wanted to but had not had the time. On our second date he presented me with my own copy of The Curious Incident that he'd gone out and bought for me because he knew I was busy working full-time and going to school full-time. I kept my coy composure, but inside, I was melting into a puddle of love goo. I thought to myself, "Oh my God. I think...I...love...him. WHAT!? How did this happen!?" Any man who knows me well enough to buy me a book is a keeper. It was on after that. I was his lady, and he was my man.
For our first Christmas, we decided to book a trip to Savannah over my birthday weekend because neither of us had been. As the trip drew closer, I knew he was going to propose to me because you cannot surprise ol' Christy. It's like licking your own elbow; it's just not possible. Many have tried, none have succeeded. The drive to Savannah was great...until we actually got into Savannah. We made about 25 wrong turns, and our hotel didn't have a parking lot, so it was impossible to get on street parking anywhere near the place. After about 30 minutes of circling around the stupid hotel waiting for someone to pull out of a parking spot, we finally got lucky. It was 9:00 P.M. at this point, so, needless to say, we were both pretty annoyed with life and each other by then. To top it all off, it was freezing cold. Who would've thought that it would be in the low FIFTIES in Georgia during the last weekend of March? Not Weather.com. We had been horribly misinformed and had packed clothes for the upper 60's/lower 70's we were promised. Despite the sucky parking situation and crappy weather, our riverfront suite was absolutely gorgeous! However, the only thing I was interested in at that point was eating. Patrick, however, was like, "Let's take a walk. I saw a really pretty square a few blocks away when we were driving around." I'm sure I shot him an "Eat Poop and Die" look because that did not sound like a dinner plan. "Surely the boy isn't going to propose tonight, " I thought. "My birthday isn't until tomorrow. It's dark. It's cold. And with our luck, someone would probably rob him of the ring while we were walking to the stupid square." "Can we go check it out tomorrow? I'm starving right now," I replied. "Well, can I at least give you your birthday gift before we go out," he asked. I knew what was coming, so I thought I'd throw him a bone. He presented me with the absolute, most sweet handwritten letter on the face of the planet. When I finished reading, he got down on one knee and gave me my gorgeous engagement ring. He likes to interject during this part of the story that he was kneeling there on the ground for five minutes while I checked out the ring to make sure it was satisfactory, but that's not true. He was probably only down there for a minute and a half (Ha!). The rest of our trip to Savannah was perfect, if not unseasonably cold.
Since I already knew Patrick was proposing, I'd started planning our wedding on the sly. (I can't help it. I'm a planner.) I wanted us to get married at Green River Plantation in Rutherfordton. When he proposed on March 26th, I knew it was too late to plan a summer wedding for 2010, so we decided on September instead of waiting until the next summer. My precious Nana's (who had suddenly passed away the previous February) birthday is September 25th, which happened to be a Saturday that year. "Perfect!" I thought, until I called Green River to check their availability and discovered that some other heifer had already claimed my perfect, sentimental wedding date. "Well, do you have anything else available in September," I asked with great internal annoyance, secretly hoping the Sept. 25th bride was fat and ugly. "Yes, September 11th is open...for obvious reasons," was the reply. "Ugh," I thought...for obvious reasons. "Okay, we'll discuss it and get back to you," I said. Defeated and frustrated, I presented this dilemma to Patrick. "Who cares what our wedding date is? It will still be special to us no matter what," was Patrick's very wise reply. (Which just goes to show that the whole "dumb" act he puts on when I ask if he remembered to do something is a total front.) So it was that our wedding date came to be 9.11.10. My students were horrified when I told them this. "OhMiGah! WHY would you EVER want to get married on 9.11!?! It's such a bad day!" I then proceeded to ask them when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and they looked at me like confused puppies. "My point exactly," I said. "Just because something horrible happened to our country on September 11th, that doesn't mean that nothing good can ever happen again on that date." They seemed mildly satisfied with that and were distracted enough to start asking me about things like bridesmaid dresses and flowers. We still get raised eyebrows, though, when we tell people our anniversary is September 11th. Oh well.
We planned to get married outside on the front lawn and have our reception in the lakeside gazebo at Green River; however, karma must've decided to pay me back for some bad deed on that date because it rained non-stop for hours. The owner of Green River would periodically come in to reassure me. "Oh, this has happened tons of times! If it stops raining an hour before the ceremony, we can dry everything off and still have it outside!" She stopped being so reassuring around 3:00 P.M. With great chagrin, I gave her the go-ahead to turn our reception space into the space for our 4:30 P.M. nuptials. As a side note before I go on, I would like to say that I would've rather walked five miles to my ceremony site than be driven to it in an antique car or a horse and buggy. If you did that at your wedding, please do not be offended; it's just not my style - much in the way that some people were N'Sync fans while others preferred Backstreet Boys. It's just a personal choice. Anyway, I digress. Knowing this about me, imagine my utter disdain when the owner of Green River emerged again and informed me that it was too wet for me to walk to the gazebo; they'd have to drive me and the wedding party in the antique Rolls Royce. At this point, though, I'd had quite a few glasses of champagne, so I'm pretty sure my response was a cheery, "Whatever!" The one thing I do distinctly remember about the Rolls Ride is Ellen, the elderly mother (whom I LOVED) of the owner of Green River, looking back at my bridesmaids and commenting, "You girls have got the biggest boobies of any bridal party I've ever seen! Girls' boobies just keep getting bigger nowadays! It must be all those birth control pills you take!" True Story.
Despite the rain, despite the fact that my guests had to sit at the reception tables during the ceremony, despite the fact that I thought the centerpieces were atrocious, despite the fact that the DJ played horrible Kenny G jazz during dinner when I had given him an iPod loaded with music and strict instructions NOT to play Kenny G jazz at any point during the reception, our wedding was pretty close to perfect. We got to exchange vows as our families and best friends stood beside us while even more family and friends looked on. The food was amazing. The cake was exactly as I wanted it. The rain eventually did stop, and I danced up a tipsy storm for hours with some of my absolute best friends in the entire world. What more could a girl want?
Since I had just begun working at KMHS a few weeks before our wedding and had ZERO leave time, we took our "honeymoon" in Asheville that Saturday night/Sunday. Once again, it wasn't exactly what I had envisioned for us, but like our ceremony, it ended up being wonderful. The hotel upgraded us to an apartment-esque suite, and the weather was gorgeous (Karma must've decided we'd suffered enough) as we leisurely strolled around the Biltmore. Everything about that weekend was so simple and sweet. I find myself being very nostalgic for it as I sit here typing our story. One of the biggest lessons I've learned as an adult is that you may not always have every detail of the fairy tale life you've envisioned for yourself while growing up, but it's not the details that matter. Did I ever dream my first date with my husband would be at the Gastonia Chili's? Do I even need to answer that? Did my fairy tale include a "bad" wedding date, rain, and Kenny G? Hardly. Did I imagine that I'd honeymoon for one night on the tropical beaches of...Asheville? Please. But none of that matters. What 27-year-old Christy understands that 16-year-old Christy didn't is that none of the small things matter as long as the big things are there. I got my love story and my sweet husband and my adorable house and my wonderful (yet exhausting) job and now my precious baby girl. Who cares if life altered the details a little? I sure don't.
Suffice it to say that I don't have the best taste in men when left to my own devices. Of course it took me years to figure this out. It finally hit me one summer when I was, once again, chasing after someone who was a bit of a free spirit. I can't help it. I love male versions of me. I guess that makes me a narcissist, but hey, we all have our ideosyncracies. Since my very first semester of college when I was still naive and stupid, I have loved outgoing, over the top, center-of-attention guys. However, this creates an issue because this kind of man is often not interested in serious relationships, and I am by no means a hoochie trick. So, alas, many a relationship of mine failed to thrive before it even really got started. After repeating this pattern time after time, it finally hit me: I need to look elsewhere for a relationship because I suck at picking out my own boyfriends. Enter eHarmony. As I was completing my ridiculously long questionnaire designed to reveal my innermost wants and desires, I thought to myself, "Am I really doing this? Am I going to be one of those people?" But then an image of every male I'd ever liked, dated, kissed, chased, or even had romantic notions toward flashed through my consciousness, and I gladly clicked through all bagillion pages of the questionnaire and posted witty quips and interesting facts about myself on my online profile page.
It took a few weeks for the whole eHarmony thing to really impress me. They only send you five matches a week, and most of mine were too old, too young, too far away, too meh. Then one day I saw a cute teacher from Shelby in my matches and my interest was piqued. "I'll let him contact me first," I thought to myself. You know, let's be old-fashioned on this new-fangled online dating site. Makes sense, right? Well, patience is not one of the fruits of the spirit with which I have been blessed, so after nary a peep from him, I made the first move a few days later. Of course Patrick couldn't resist my well-written emails, so we soon began calling each other. I looked forward to our evening conversations every day and even leaped over grocery bags, ottomans, shoes, you name it, in an attempt to get to my phone as quickly as possible when I knew it was him calling me. We made our first real date for August 4th, 2009. I let him pick the restaurant...and he picked Chili's in Gastonia. He'll kill me for writing that, but I thought to myself, "OH GAH. Everything's been going so well up to this point, and THIS is where he wants us to go on our first date!?" But my good sense prevailed, and I decided to give the date a chance, and I'm so glad I did.
Sometimes you can pinpoint the moment you fall in love with someone, and I know exactly when I fell in love with Patrick. In our many pre-first-date conversations, we talked about common interests, hobbies, all that mushy getting-to-know-you crap. Being English teachers, we both loved to read. I told Patrick that one of my all-time favorite books was I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak, and he in turn said that his recent favorite was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. On our first date Patrick informed me that he'd bought and been reading I Am the Messenger because he knew I loved it. I thought that was so sweet! I told him that I hadn't read The Curious Incident yet, but I really wanted to but had not had the time. On our second date he presented me with my own copy of The Curious Incident that he'd gone out and bought for me because he knew I was busy working full-time and going to school full-time. I kept my coy composure, but inside, I was melting into a puddle of love goo. I thought to myself, "Oh my God. I think...I...love...him. WHAT!? How did this happen!?" Any man who knows me well enough to buy me a book is a keeper. It was on after that. I was his lady, and he was my man.
For our first Christmas, we decided to book a trip to Savannah over my birthday weekend because neither of us had been. As the trip drew closer, I knew he was going to propose to me because you cannot surprise ol' Christy. It's like licking your own elbow; it's just not possible. Many have tried, none have succeeded. The drive to Savannah was great...until we actually got into Savannah. We made about 25 wrong turns, and our hotel didn't have a parking lot, so it was impossible to get on street parking anywhere near the place. After about 30 minutes of circling around the stupid hotel waiting for someone to pull out of a parking spot, we finally got lucky. It was 9:00 P.M. at this point, so, needless to say, we were both pretty annoyed with life and each other by then. To top it all off, it was freezing cold. Who would've thought that it would be in the low FIFTIES in Georgia during the last weekend of March? Not Weather.com. We had been horribly misinformed and had packed clothes for the upper 60's/lower 70's we were promised. Despite the sucky parking situation and crappy weather, our riverfront suite was absolutely gorgeous! However, the only thing I was interested in at that point was eating. Patrick, however, was like, "Let's take a walk. I saw a really pretty square a few blocks away when we were driving around." I'm sure I shot him an "Eat Poop and Die" look because that did not sound like a dinner plan. "Surely the boy isn't going to propose tonight, " I thought. "My birthday isn't until tomorrow. It's dark. It's cold. And with our luck, someone would probably rob him of the ring while we were walking to the stupid square." "Can we go check it out tomorrow? I'm starving right now," I replied. "Well, can I at least give you your birthday gift before we go out," he asked. I knew what was coming, so I thought I'd throw him a bone. He presented me with the absolute, most sweet handwritten letter on the face of the planet. When I finished reading, he got down on one knee and gave me my gorgeous engagement ring. He likes to interject during this part of the story that he was kneeling there on the ground for five minutes while I checked out the ring to make sure it was satisfactory, but that's not true. He was probably only down there for a minute and a half (Ha!). The rest of our trip to Savannah was perfect, if not unseasonably cold.
Since I already knew Patrick was proposing, I'd started planning our wedding on the sly. (I can't help it. I'm a planner.) I wanted us to get married at Green River Plantation in Rutherfordton. When he proposed on March 26th, I knew it was too late to plan a summer wedding for 2010, so we decided on September instead of waiting until the next summer. My precious Nana's (who had suddenly passed away the previous February) birthday is September 25th, which happened to be a Saturday that year. "Perfect!" I thought, until I called Green River to check their availability and discovered that some other heifer had already claimed my perfect, sentimental wedding date. "Well, do you have anything else available in September," I asked with great internal annoyance, secretly hoping the Sept. 25th bride was fat and ugly. "Yes, September 11th is open...for obvious reasons," was the reply. "Ugh," I thought...for obvious reasons. "Okay, we'll discuss it and get back to you," I said. Defeated and frustrated, I presented this dilemma to Patrick. "Who cares what our wedding date is? It will still be special to us no matter what," was Patrick's very wise reply. (Which just goes to show that the whole "dumb" act he puts on when I ask if he remembered to do something is a total front.) So it was that our wedding date came to be 9.11.10. My students were horrified when I told them this. "OhMiGah! WHY would you EVER want to get married on 9.11!?! It's such a bad day!" I then proceeded to ask them when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and they looked at me like confused puppies. "My point exactly," I said. "Just because something horrible happened to our country on September 11th, that doesn't mean that nothing good can ever happen again on that date." They seemed mildly satisfied with that and were distracted enough to start asking me about things like bridesmaid dresses and flowers. We still get raised eyebrows, though, when we tell people our anniversary is September 11th. Oh well.
We planned to get married outside on the front lawn and have our reception in the lakeside gazebo at Green River; however, karma must've decided to pay me back for some bad deed on that date because it rained non-stop for hours. The owner of Green River would periodically come in to reassure me. "Oh, this has happened tons of times! If it stops raining an hour before the ceremony, we can dry everything off and still have it outside!" She stopped being so reassuring around 3:00 P.M. With great chagrin, I gave her the go-ahead to turn our reception space into the space for our 4:30 P.M. nuptials. As a side note before I go on, I would like to say that I would've rather walked five miles to my ceremony site than be driven to it in an antique car or a horse and buggy. If you did that at your wedding, please do not be offended; it's just not my style - much in the way that some people were N'Sync fans while others preferred Backstreet Boys. It's just a personal choice. Anyway, I digress. Knowing this about me, imagine my utter disdain when the owner of Green River emerged again and informed me that it was too wet for me to walk to the gazebo; they'd have to drive me and the wedding party in the antique Rolls Royce. At this point, though, I'd had quite a few glasses of champagne, so I'm pretty sure my response was a cheery, "Whatever!" The one thing I do distinctly remember about the Rolls Ride is Ellen, the elderly mother (whom I LOVED) of the owner of Green River, looking back at my bridesmaids and commenting, "You girls have got the biggest boobies of any bridal party I've ever seen! Girls' boobies just keep getting bigger nowadays! It must be all those birth control pills you take!" True Story.
Despite the rain, despite the fact that my guests had to sit at the reception tables during the ceremony, despite the fact that I thought the centerpieces were atrocious, despite the fact that the DJ played horrible Kenny G jazz during dinner when I had given him an iPod loaded with music and strict instructions NOT to play Kenny G jazz at any point during the reception, our wedding was pretty close to perfect. We got to exchange vows as our families and best friends stood beside us while even more family and friends looked on. The food was amazing. The cake was exactly as I wanted it. The rain eventually did stop, and I danced up a tipsy storm for hours with some of my absolute best friends in the entire world. What more could a girl want?
Since I had just begun working at KMHS a few weeks before our wedding and had ZERO leave time, we took our "honeymoon" in Asheville that Saturday night/Sunday. Once again, it wasn't exactly what I had envisioned for us, but like our ceremony, it ended up being wonderful. The hotel upgraded us to an apartment-esque suite, and the weather was gorgeous (Karma must've decided we'd suffered enough) as we leisurely strolled around the Biltmore. Everything about that weekend was so simple and sweet. I find myself being very nostalgic for it as I sit here typing our story. One of the biggest lessons I've learned as an adult is that you may not always have every detail of the fairy tale life you've envisioned for yourself while growing up, but it's not the details that matter. Did I ever dream my first date with my husband would be at the Gastonia Chili's? Do I even need to answer that? Did my fairy tale include a "bad" wedding date, rain, and Kenny G? Hardly. Did I imagine that I'd honeymoon for one night on the tropical beaches of...Asheville? Please. But none of that matters. What 27-year-old Christy understands that 16-year-old Christy didn't is that none of the small things matter as long as the big things are there. I got my love story and my sweet husband and my adorable house and my wonderful (yet exhausting) job and now my precious baby girl. Who cares if life altered the details a little? I sure don't.
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