fifteen years

This morning, when I stumbled groggily out of bed at Hubs' request to find him making breakfast and getting the Little Dude's lunch ready for school he said to me, "Do you know what the weather is going to be like today? Can you find out and pick out some clothes for him for school? And what's the show-and-tell theme this week? I can't remember. Oh, and by the way, Happy Anniversary!"

Oh! Riiiiiiight. I had totally, completely forgotten about our wedding anniversary. There's been so much going on around here lately, and I'm bad at remembering dates at the best of times so this one almost snuck past me. I did some quick math and realized that we have been married for fifteen years. FIFTEEN YEARS! And I'll be honest, its kinda freaking me out. How have we been married for that long? Where did those years go? How did this happen?

In an effort to jog my memory I dug around in boxes to find the wedding album. And you know what I realized? That fifteen years is a really. long. time. You know how long? So long that our wedding photos were shot on film. Seriously. I had to scan these in to post them.FILM PEOPLE! Not digital, but old fashioned, send-it-away-and-wait-for-it-to-be-developed film. I swear, its practically like looking at daugerrotypes. So, some of you might not know me personally, and I don't put up a ton of photos of myself here on the ole' blog, so you may not have the same feelings I had looking at these pictures, because you won't have a real concrete idea of how I look these days. (the most recent picture I can find on the blog is about 8 photos down in this post about the Baby's birthday in the pic where he's blowing out his candles. No wait, here's a better one.) But I know how I look these days and the predominant feeling I had looking at these pictures was "Who is that child? And why are they letting her get married? She is clearly waaaaay too young. What are her parents thinking?" Seriously, we look like we are about sixteen in this picture (when really, I was the ripe old age of twenty four, and felt very, very mature and ready to enter married adult life) but honestly, I look at this and the first thing I think is "someone take that glass of wine away from that child!" Though on the positive side, my dress does not look too dated. Though please excuse the cheesiness of the above picture, where my flower girl is trying on the wedding dress (there is so much wrong with that from a feminist perspective but at the time I was talked into it as being a 'cute' photo op) I like the way we are connecting in this photo though, my sweet niece and I. I'm showing her the embroidery I did myself on the dress, which was my favourite part of it, so that's nice at least. Though I don't have a single good photo of the embroidery, which was definitely an oversight on my part. I was going for simple with my dress, and there is certainly a 90's Uma-Thurman-in-Prada-y kind of feel to it, but I still like the way it looks, so that's good. Though this photo makes me wince just a teensy bit in its self-consciousness, but I'm going to forgive myself my hubris as I was, as we have mentioned, very very young. Speaking of young, look at this guy. Sheesh.

And just to be official, here is the entire wedding party. By the way, that adorable little flower girl, my niece, is just finishing her first year of university. UNIVERSITY. Sigh.
And here we are, walking back up the aisel together as a newly-minted married couple and very happy about it.

Although these pictures are very sweet, I still cannot shake the feeling that I'm looking at pictures of some other culture where they permit children to get married. Fifteen years have gone by, and on the one hand it feels like no time at all has passed, and on the other hand, it feels like we are a lifetime away from that fresh-faced hopeful young pair. Such a funny contradiciton.

Anyhow, the celebrations today included lunch with with my Hubs at our favourite Thai place with no small children in attendance, some flowers from my man (the same kind we had on the tables at our wedding reception. I can't believe he remembers those details), a very thoughtful card that was funny and sweet at the same time, and a morning spent with the same guy I spent the last fifteen years of mornings with. And he held my hand any time I wanted him to. Can't ask for more than that.