Crazy enough to marry the same man twice!

Allow me to turn back the time about 20 years and tell you my love story of how my husband and I were married TWICE!  I met my now husband when I was fourteen years old! As all young childhood sweethearts tend to do, we thought we'd be together forever. Many of the adults and peers in our lives determined we were naive and essentially crazy to think this would happen, we were determined to prove them wrong! Fast forward seven years there we were still crazy in love, getting ready to be married, before my husband, Patrick shipped out for an Army assignment. 

Due to the fact that he was shipping out and we wanted to be married before he left we decided to have a small intimate wedding with our pastor presiding. Our parents, siblings and one close friend were all that were in attendance. This ceremony was just to make it official. 

I had already been planning a formal wedding, chosen a venue, ordered the invitations as well as found a photographer, picked out flowers and many other things that come along with wedding planning. I had found a dress that was being altered. I wanted my "princess" wedding and was not going to be flexible on that! 

We were fortunate that his assignment was within the same state (about 3 hours away from home) and I demanded he be allowed to take leave the weekend I had already set the date of the wedding. This date was significant and I again, was not willing to bend. The date we had chosen was exactly seven years to the date we had officially begun dating. The stars had aligned in our favor! No going back or changing the date!

Thankfully, his commander was able to provide permission for him to have leave on the weekend of June 7, 2003 for us to still be able to hold our formal ceremony and reception afterwards. We had a wonderful "renewal of vows" only six months after our official wedding. It was a wonderful day that went off with almost everything going as planned and how I had dreamed it would be from the moment we met! 

At our reception, my grandfather gave the blessing. He began with a moment of silence which we all thought would be related to the fact that my husband was in the middle of an Army assignment keeping our country safe. Boy did he have us all fooled as he stated "let this marriage last longer than the last one". Thunderous laughter ensued, and then he gave the real blessing. 

When I tell my love story of me and my husband, I always start off with how we were so crazy and crazy in love that we married each other twice! Would I have changed things if I had had control over things? Perhaps, but our story is definitely unique, memorable and one for the books and is ours to tell for the rest of our days.