At this exact time 16 years ago, I was having breakfast at the waffle house with my friends, Cary, Laura, Sherry and Heath. We had spent the night at the Holiday Inn Express just off of exit 11 in Clarksville. The night before we had our rehearsal and then had our rehearsal dinner, which was wonderfully cooked by Virginia (Chip's Mom) at the Trahern Mansion. We wanted the night to be special so we invited lots of friends, not just ones who were in the wedding. After that, I did not want to go all the way back home to Mount Juliet with my parents so I stayed in the hotel and Laura and Cary stayed with me. Sherry and Heath also came in from Mississippi and stayed with us. After breakfast, we went back to the room to get ready...we had to be at the church at 12:00pm for pics and the wedding was at 2:00pm. The one thing I remember about getting ready in the room at the hotel was how nervous Laura was. She was a wreck and she was making the rest of us nuts. Once we got to the church, which was Little Hope Baptist Church (yes, I get the joke), we finished getting ready. I remember feeling so calm about the day and everyone else was a bundle of nerves. Probably because I had not planned several things well... for instance, the bridesmaid dresses were horrible. I loved the color but everyone was falling out of them. I also didn't think too much about the music....Rachel Arvin, bless her heart, was not given much/if any time to practice with my singers. And I had not picked out any prewedding music so she had to use songs that Sherry had picked out for her wedding...I am sorry. My singers were Beau Nave, who sang "Keeper of the Stars" and Kim Jones (Chip's sister) sang "Sunrise, Sunset." I remember being in the "waiting room" and being so hot that I would sit down and slip the top half of my dress down...I was still covered just not so hot. And every single time I would finally get comfortable, the video guy would come in....he learned after a couple of times to knock first! Most of you know that my step dad was like my own dad and I picked out a song when I was a young teen and told him I was going to have it played at my wedding. We found a copy, a cassette actually, and it didn't sound great but it was precious. The name of it was something like "You will always be the only man in my heart.." It was very special to me and I am so thankful he was able to walk me down the aisle. When I did walk down the aisle, my sweet husband to be sang "Forever is as far as I'll go" and it was beautiful. Before the ceremony, I had some of my sorority sisters light our candles for us and I thought that was very cool. I wish I could have included so many more of my special friends in our day but I couldn't..we were all broke!! My bridesmaids were my sisters Angie and Kim, Kim Jones, Carla Jackson, Cary McCain, and Sherry Grove. Chip's guys were his Dad, Brent Dukes, Brad Lake, Todd Turner and ??? gone blank. His brother Randy performed the ceremony which was special. We had him use the same vows that my mom and dad had used years ago which was pretty cool.
Because we were broke and did not have the money to "go all out" we had a typical, cake, mints, nuts and punch reception. Also it was a bit cheesy but we did have the ADPi's sing "Little ADPi DPi, like a gem you are, I believe that you must have been a star..." and the Sigma Chi's sang the Sweetheart Song which I cannot recall right now. My white blazer was our "get away car" and needless to say, we had to stop pretty quickly after we left to remove some of the "gifts" left on it. We were pelted with birdseed which I was finding in my clothes and hair for a couple of days! We went to the Music City Sheraton that night and had dinner in the revolving restaurant. It was way too fancy and expensive for us...we ended up ordering a pizza later that night!! I was still in school at the time and we got married during our spring break so I had to be back at school the following Monday! We had originally planned to get married May 18 and then go on a week cruise/disney vacation. But the way the summer classes fell, if I wanted to graduate early, I had to split the wedding and the honeymoon. Which was also fun!! My mom worried that people would think I was moving it up because I was pregnant which some of them probably did. It was probably the same people who said we were getting married too young and we didn't know what we were doing. There are many regrets I have....like wasting so much of my time on guys that were so bad for me...but marrying Chip is not one of them.
Today I am so thankful for my special husband. If you know me, you know that I am pretty high maintaince but he is so kind and patient.
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