Tenth anniversary! May 18, 2002. The best day.

This year Nate and I celebrated our tenth anniversary.  We are so blessed, and it was so fun to look through our wedding albums and scan some photos to post.  I got a little carried away, and scanned a lot - scanning photos, it turns out, was much easier than I thought, not to mention addictive. 

{Unfortunately, some photos are permanently stuck in our wedding album so I couldn't include everyone we love who was involved in our wedding.  If you miss seeing yourself, you were not forgotten!  Just glued in really, really well.}

 Here we are saying our vows.  But now I'm going to go back in time just little bit more and work my way  up to that.

Rehearsal.  Me and my dad!

Uncle Fred and Aunt Connie.

 Nate's sister Lane, with their late grandpa Oliver and his wife, Doris.

Our wedding was at Lake Beauty Covenant Bible Camp, where Nate and I met and got engaged.  Beloved family came up to camp to be with us on our special day.  This is my cousin Val and her son Nels.  I can't believe he was ever this little!  Yes, we are a Swedish people.

My cousin Terry and Nate.
Nate has always reminded me of Terry.
They're both funny and sweet guys.  I love them.

My Mom and Dad.

Nate's aunts, Gig and Meem, and his late grandparents, Joe and Carol.

I was so amazed Nate had so many grandparents when we started dating.  All of mine have been gone for quite some time, so I was excited to be able to have grandparents in my life again.  And in the past ten years, we have said goodbye to all of Nate's.  These pictures are bittersweet to look at.

 Terry and his wife Danielle, and their cute little girl Jessica.

It was a chilly but gorgeous morning!

Nate with his sister Lane and brothers Mark and Joe.

One second before this picture was taken, Mark had been standing on the other side of Joe, on the steps, and on his tiptoes, trying to appear at least 5 inches taller than everyone.

Mark was then put in the middle. 

This I-want-to-be-the-tallest phenomenon kept happening throughout the day.  And since Nate and I have been married, time and time again I have witnessed Mark, Joe and Nate all trying to be the tallest in family photos.

Those guys are all well over 6 feet tall.  Is there really a need to be even taller? 

Apparently so.

 Nate and I with his grandparents.

 And with my parents.



Nate's parents. 



The wedding party - my sister Maren was my matron of honor and our friend Lester was Nate's best man.



With Nate's family.



 

 At this point I was freezing and ready to be done with picture-taking.

 Strings!  Friends of Nate's mom.  The music was beautiful.

 Pastor Tom gives Nate some last-minute tips?

 Nate's face in this picture is so funny.  He was already tired of being the center of attention and the wedding hadn't even actually started yet.

And after the reception we got out of there quickly.  He just didn't want to have everyone looking at him. 

This is why we considered elopement for a short time (15 minutes).  No crowd of people.  But that didn't really seem like a good idea.  We needed to celebrate!

So instead, when the wedding started, we simply asked everyone to look away during the vows.
Just kidding.

 Here we go.  11 am sharp.

 This picture cracks me up!  My dad looks so depressed.

 In a surprising change of emotions, Nate cried and I didn't.  I didn't even wear any eye makeup because I was afraid of crying and turning into a raccoon.  Instead, I didn't shed a single tear.  Every other bride I've seen has wept happy tears.  I was wondering, what is wrong with me?  I think I was too happy to even bother with tears. 

At one point while Nate and I were engaged, and he was doing most of the wedding planning, someone actually accused me of not really wanting to get married because I wanted a short, no-frills wedding.  They could not imagine that we didn't want a unity candle, or special music, or that I didn't even want the ends of the chairs inside the chapel decorated with bows.  Can you believe that?

I totally wanted to marry Nate.  I thought it was incredibly unfair to accuse me that since the magnitude of the wedding ceremony was small, that meant I didn't really love Nate that much, and wasn't excited about getting married.   Just because there weren't little favors for everyone, and we didn't have our names printed on napkins, and we didn't have a dance, certainly didn't mean I didn't love him enough.  Good grief.

I'm just not a wedding planning, gigantic wedding dress, huge dance reception type of girl.  I like other people's weddings that are like that - but only because I am not involved in the actual execution of the event.

 And then we were married.

 Nate worked on staff at Lake Beauty for ten years, so there were tons of camp people there.  It was so fun.  We love Lake Beauty.

Receiving line at the bottom of the hill.

 Lunch at camp.

 Swedish cake to make lunch even better.

So many friends came to be with us!

And some troublemakers . . .

I am not including photos of the cake feeding/garter toss/bouquet toss.  I did not want to include any of these things in our wedding (well, the bouquet toss, I suppose, that is a must) but somehow they happened anyway.  Someone must have forced us to do this, but I have no idea who.  I remember someone running to Wal-Mart to buy a garter because I didn't want anything to do with one, so I came unprepared:  "What?  You didn't buy a garter?"  Nope.  And I remember putting it on two seconds before Nate took it off, looking at the silly little plastic wedding bells and the scratchy netting on it and thinking, this is so dumb. I still look at the photo of Nate and I feeding cake to each other and remembering how ridiculous that was and how quickly I wanted it to end.

Stupid wedding traditions.  May they be outlawed.

 Nate's car was decked out.

I didn't realize this, but Nate wanted everything removed immediately.

We drove to the end of the drive at camp to give the impression that we were driving away with it completely decorated.  I thought we were going to continue driving, but what really happened was, Nate parked, removed all the decorations from the car, and then we went to his parents house where he attacked the windows with Windex to remove any wedding evidence. 

We also had to stop at Wal-Mart to pick up film for the our honeymoon in Alaska.  And Nate asked me to please take the flowers out of my hair so it wouldn't be totally obvious we were a bride and groom.  Geez.

So, I wasn't the only one who was being a wedding party pooper.

We came back to camp a week later and life together began in this little trailer.
There went my promise to myself that I would never, ever live in a trailer.
It was actually pretty cute inside.

The past ten years have been amazing.  Had we been married in a decked-out cathedral with choirs and ten thousand roses, I couldn't be any happier than I am now.  I think our wedding was just a small way to begin a wonderful and significant life together.  I you, Nate!