erin's ridiculously awesome wedding tales!

all i can say is, Love this lady! and i Love the story on how this little family began with their wedding and honeymoon - such a fun couple! :)

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Hello there, lovely readers of the beautiful bride! This is Erin from Pughs'News. I'm so happy to be guest-posting for Kim as she jets off to Thailand to ride elephants and enjoy her honeymoon adventure with her darling hubby (!!!) Dannon.

I just know that Kim's wedding is going to be marvellous, what with the picnic baskets, late summer sun, and the paper flowers and pinwheels. Just perfect and exactly what you'd expect of our lovely Kimbirdy! It's got me thinking about my wedding...

We had a gorgeous outdoor ceremony (personalized with a reading from The Velveteen Rabbit, read by my darling friend Em). The sun shone, violins played the love theme from Romeo and Juliet and I carried a big bunch of hydrangeas (my favourite). All our friends and family from around the world were there. We had Canadian and English flags flying (Alan's from London), a barbeque reception which we arrived to with the theme from Star Wars (Alan's fave) accompanying us, DQ blizzards in the back of our wedding car...

And a seriously awesome dance party with all of our favourite songs on the playlist!

It was a wonderful day. We didn't stop smiling once. It's sort of cheesy to say, but love really was all around (stole that from Love Actually... did you notice? ;~) I was just so, so happy.

We stayed in an amazing hotel on our wedding night and came home the next day to this, courtesy of our friends and family (Em let them into our apartment... and I will never let her forget it!) I'll always remember opening the door and seeing all those balloons.

Then we left on our honeymoon. We had even less money in those days than we do now (is that even possible?!), so we didn't go far. But my dad rented us a red sports car for the week, and it was so fun cruising up the island to our cabin in the woods.

We rode the chair lift up Mt Washington eating ice cream cones. The view was amazing! And the ice cream was delicious...

Then we carried on, further up the island to Strathcona Park Lodge, far from civilization. It was breathtaking there.

This was the view from our little cabin on the lake. I loved waking up to it, with my new husband by my side! We drank tea and roasted marshmallows and played Scrabble and went for walks. We sat on our little balcony in the evening drinking wine. It was so relaxing, just perfect after the craziness of our wedding weekend.

Here's where they served dinner every evening! I could get used to that, couldn't you?

My wedding and honeymoon were amazing. Everything about that week was oh-so perfect. It was just the way I wanted to start off our married life, surrounded by our family and friends, and then all by ourselves for a bit to savour it all. Bliss!

But of course, in the eight years since then, our life hasn't been all roses and sunshine. We have had our share of hard times and sadness and stress. But that is what love is about, isn't it? It's about being real, and accepting the real life part of being married (the bills and the compromises and the days when you're grumpy and would just rather be alone for a while!) The party and the honeymoon are fabulous, but the commitment you've made to one another is what matters the most. I love my husband, and our two beautiful little boys, and I try to make sure they know it every day. And when life isn't as perfect as I'd like it to be, I try to remember this bit of The Velveteen Rabbit that Em read aloud onour wedding day (I am a children't librarian, so it just seemed like the right choice!)...

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." "Does it hurt?" asked the rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are real, you don't mind being hurt... It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all..."

Isn't that lovely? It makes me cry every time!

Thank you to Kim for letting me share my little love story with you, and allowing me a chance to wish her and Dannon a lifetime of love and happiness together. It's going to be an amazing adventure, I'm sure. And as Real as it can be.

Cheers!

xo Erin

PS: While Kim's away, come visit me over at Pughs' News! I love to make new friends.