Happy Anniversary part 1

July 7th is our first wedding anniversary for our first wedding.  If we're going to get technical about this, we had two weddings and technically have two anniversaries.  I will probably be the only one who actually remembers these dates and will remind someone else about them, but that's ok.

I thought that for this post, I would tell the story about our "wedding day" and why we chose to go this route.  So here is part one and part two will come when the first anniversary of our second wedding roles around. 

In order for you to fully understand our story, we have to backup to March 2010.  Andrew was still living in Ann Arbor, MI finishing his master's degree in biomedical engineering and I was still living at home with my parents in Geneva, IL subbing.  Much to everyone's surprised, we weren't engaged even though we had been together since like the second grade.  I have to admit, I was a little perturbed that I didn't have a pretty little ring on my left hand.  Now we knew that we were going to get married, we just hadn't hammered out the details yet.  Andrew was actually the first person to suggest a surprise wedding.  The more and more I thought about it, I loved the idea.  I hate being the center of attention and didn't really want to answer constant wedding questions until we actually got married.  I found this blog and got really excited about the idea. 

Sorry, but we have to fast forward a bit, but you'll get the middle part of the story in part two. :)

Our perfect wedding was to have one of our brothers get ordained and marry us.  Neither of us are particularly religious, so the idea of a church wedding was just not us.  After doing some research, it was going to be way too difficult to get one of our brothers ordained for the wedding and I didn't know if IL would even allow it.  So we were back to a church wedding.  The dad of one of my mom's kindergarteners was a pastor, so we got set up to meet with the pastor.  Turns out we just weren't feeling it.  It wasn't part of our dream wedding.

Without telling anyone specifics, we just said that we weren't going with a pastor and we would have it taken care of (our parents were helping us plan the wedding).  All through June we started talking about getting married at the Capitol building in Madison.  It just seemed like the easiest thing for us to do.  How romantic, right?

Now the date.  I had to take a class in Milwaukee for two weeks in July, so for 7 days, I would be driving back and forth.  I asked Andrew when he wanted to get married and he responded with "something easy to remember."  Ok, how about 7/11?  Perfect!  Oh wait, I have class, that's a no go.  So Andrew suggested 7/7/11.  Well, I had to teach summer school in the morning, but my afternoon was free.

We quickly drove downtown so we could get started on our marriage license and I began emailing judges to see who was free.  Soon we had a date, a license, a judge, and a half day off of work.  (Now finding something to wear was another story and a long process).

So July 7, 2011 started off uneventful.  We both went off to work for the morning.  I was done teaching at 11am, so Andrew took a half day and we headed down to the Capitol.  It was the one and only time that we have been in the Capitol.  We found the judge in the rotunda and then set out to find two people to sign our license as witnesses, cue security guard and tour guide.  (side note: did you know that these people don't actually have to witness your wedding, just the declaration that you want to marry each other.  Interesting fact.)  Once that little part was out of the way, he took us to the side of the Capitol that faces Lake Monona. 

The ceremony was pretty quick and didn't seem very real.  I think that because it was just the three of us, the reality didn't really set in for me.  We used the promise ring that I had gotten Andrew back in undergrad and a $10 ring that I found at JCPenny (klassy).

After our quickie ceremony, we headed down to the Henry Vilas Zoo.  Perfect wedding activity, right?  Sorry, no pictures from this.  We walked around for a bit, ate some $1 popcorn, and went home to walk Lucy.

Andrew then surprised me with a beautiful dinner at L'Etoile on Capitol Square.  I'll have to take a picture of the menu because they wrote congratulations on it :)

So why did we get married twice?  Well, we had our little ceremony together, then we had my brother Sam perform our ceremony for all of our friends and family.

Three more weeks and I'll post part two with all the details of our surprise wedding ;)