part one: it begins

There are times when I come to those moments. The ones where it hits me that this moment is the one I've talked about my whole life. I remember in high school just wanting to know my future last name so that I knew when I met him. I remember convincing myself in college that it was OK if I ended up single - think of all the good I could do in the world with all my free time!

Then suddenly I was trying on white dresses. Picking out flowers. Getting rings sized and cleaned. Having showers, a bachelorette party and "let's all tie ribbons on tubes of bubbles" parties. The comments I had made my whole life like "when I get married," "when I meet my husband," or "my wedding" - it was actually happening despite the fact I still felt 10 years old inside.

Sometimes I panic that I will forget the details, how I felt in certain moments, what people said. I keep saying "we need to write it all down" before we forget. So that's what I'm going to do this week in honor of our one-year anniversary on Sunday.

Wednesday night was actually one of my best memories of the whole weekend. It was one of the few, stress-free moments I got to spend with my parents - just being their only daughter. My parents had been taking dance lessons and after practicing their learned dances along with our father-daughter dance, Shea made sure my parents knew the electric slide.

Shea also got his first look at my parent's basement. Now being a true relative, though a few days shy, he was allowed to enter this dark land, where my mother bans all others.

Thursday night we got to spend time with friends before the craziness began - most of them driving eight hours from Minnesota to be there. We grilled at my parents house. Ate smores. Eventually headed to my old college bars where the wedding party was shocked to find $1 beers. Thank you, college town.

I went to bed that night knowing that the next two days would be fun, but really failing to understand how amazing they would be.