10 years ago I put on a white dress and I said I do but not I will obey!

May 19, 2001

Ah yes a mushy post...
It is my 10th wedding anniversary!
I cannot believe it has been 10 years already. 
May 19, 2001 I put on a white dress and I said I do but I refuse to say the traditional "I will obey."  Yes I am a rebel.  No not really just did not like the word obey.   (Obey was OK with my dad until I was hmmm 12?!)

When we decided that I would be the one moving (from Quebec to California) we agreed that we would get married in Quebec since I was making the ultimate sacrifice of leaving everything and everyone behind  for us to have a life together. 
Well it did not go as we planned.  We forgot about a little detail called INS. 
Getting married in Quebec meant that Bill would come back to the US without me after our wedding.  I would have had to wait in Quebec 6-9 months before getting my conditional green card.  We also would have had to do the interviews in Canada, when applying for a green card through marriage there are interviews with the INS. Fun fun fun.
So because of that we decided to get married in the US.  I was very disappointed because it meant less people from Canada would be able to come to the wedding.

I wanted a simple wedding.  My dress was simple, I bought it off the rack for $99 and it did not need any touch up!! My MIL was VERY disappointed with me I think, she had planned a whole week of wedding dress shopping and I was not having it.  My dress was the 2nd one I tried on.
We had a small wedding, about 50 guests.  We got married in a small wooden chapel.  I had no wedding party, just a maid of honor for me and a best man for Bill.  My maid of honor was my dearest and oldest friend and she came all the way from Quebec even though she was 8 months pregnant!   I had friends who came from Canada, England and the Caribbean Islands. I was so happy to have them here with me for this important day.

It was a lovely day, only one thing went wrong: the photographer we hired did not show up!  I remember getting ready with my mom and I kept looking at the time wondering when he would show up for the pre-wedding pictures.  I would send my mom every 3 minutes to go look for him and nothing.  Finally the time came and I had to walked down the aisle and still no photographer!  5 minutes later I heard click-click-click.  I turned and I saw a guy taking pictures who was not the guy we had hired!  This turned out to be a mini fiasco and let's just say it did not end well for the guy we hired and our pictures are not great and we got some of our money back...boo hoo hoo.

We did have a lovely time.  We had a great Australian DJ! Not sure I ate any of the food that we had!!! My friends who could not come to the wedding made a video for me and that made me cry.  This is me dancing with my dad:

We went to Maui for our honeymoon.  I loved it!  We did all kinds of fun stuff there.  The best one was to go on the top of Haleakala, an active volcano, to watch the sunrise and bike down the volcano on the way back! It was the coolest experience!  This is us on the top of the volcano, it was VERY cold. 

So after 10 years I am happy to report that we are still together and happy!  We have 2 great kids.  I still have a huge accent, Bill still does not speak French and I still miss my homeland as much as I did 10 years ago.

A friend of mine told me that I should try my dress on to see if it still fits.  She said in most case, it will not fit and be too small especially if the bride had kids.  
So I did try it on and she was right it does not fit.  See:

It is a little big!!!! :)