It was a sunny, hot day. My sister Two and I had gotten into a big fight the night before, and I ended up sleeping on the couch at my parents house that night. My dress weighed a ton. It was 1991, remember, and I had spent months looking for a dress WITHOUT beading or rhinestones or lace. And also plus-size, which limited my choices. I did end up with a beautiful non-beaded, non-rhinestoned Christian Dior dress, which had these enormous puffed sleeves.

Those sleeves looked especially lovely on the model and utterly overwhelming on me, but what the hell. When I look at our wedding pictures, I wince a little inside when I see those sleeves, but then I remember how it was the first big wedding in our family, how so many of our friends flew in from out of town, and how much fun everyone had.

There are many moments from that weekend that I remember. The bandleader yelling out, "Give her a big kiss, John!" when Dr. V.'s first name is something else. How one of our friends charmed my widowed grandmother so much that he was henceforth nicknamed "Grandpa." How pretty I felt when I took off the veil that I didn't care for and put a ring of flowers in my hair for the reception. How furious I was when the groomsmen called the morning after the bachelor party, the day that all the festivities started, and told me that my groom had been put on a bus to a city 2 hours away when drunk the night before...NOT! Just kidding! Boy, they really got me that time.

But the one moment I treasure is when I was standing at the back of the church, waiting for my turn to walk down the aisle. We'd taken the jokey photos and we'd tied the big chiffon bows on the back of everyone's dresses just so, and now the music was playing and my bridesmaids were disappearing from my view one by one. The music stopped as they arranged themselves, and a friend from high school (who had not RSVPed to the wedding) arrived late and waved as he and his date slipped into the church. I haven't heard from him since.

A trumpet played Purcell's "Trumpet Voluntary." as I got ready to go. My dad and I paused at the back of the church, with everyone turned around backwards looking at us, and suddenly, I saw this dark head pop into my view as Dr. V. leaned over to look down the aisle at me. He gave a little wave and a "Hiya" grin, and it was perfect, the feeling that I had right then, that this was exactly the right person for me. Everyone in the church was turned around backwards and looking at me, 200 people or so, and yet no one could see him give me that wave and grin and I loved it, loved that moment of just he and I communicating with just a smile and a look.

I actually wrote a whole long bit about how we met, but I think I'll end the post right here. I'm too overwhelmed with 15 years of moments from our marriage, all the good and bad that everyone goes through, and somehow it has led us here, to this really happy time in our lives.