Ed and Ann Get Married

Getting Ready to Say our Vows

On Sunday, September 30, 2012, a day that will live in infamy, Ann and I got married! We got married on a Sunday, of course, because that is my only day off from work each week, and on September 30 because that is the Sunday closest to the third anniversary of our first date. After three years of dating and almost two years of living in sin together, it was time to make it official.

This post relates the back story to our wedding. The following five posts contain the photos and the story of the wedding itself. As for back story, what you need to know is that I can be a devious son of a gun. This is the story of my attempted deception, my failure at said deception, and my ultimate redemption. And in the end, this is a story that ends happily after all!

Ann and I had been talking about getting married on and off for about a year and in January of 2012, I decided that I would like to surprise her by asking her to marry me and getting married all in one fell swoop at a party for our friends and family in our back yard. I quickly hit on the idea of using the guise of a third anniversary party to carry off the deed.

Over the course of the spring and summer, I bounced my admittedly unorthodox idea off several of our friends. All the guys thought it was a great idea. To a person, each woman thought I was crazy, thinking that Ann would be mad that she wouldn't be dressed appropriately for such a momentous event. Ever the planner, I had enlisted one of her girlfriends to take care of this, but as you will read the need never came to arise. Meanwhile, over the course of the summer, Ann had started to worry that I would never get around to marrying her. I was constantly deflecting her pointed comments during the summer of 2012.

Long story short, I planted the idea of an anniversary party in Ann's head and she got right to sending out invitations to a group of people who were already on board to come to our wedding. Our friends were so quick with their affirmative replies that they almost gave it away by replying too quickly and too enthusiastically.

About 3 weeks before the party/wedding, an invitee got himself uninvited because he threatened to cause trouble if another guest also attended. Seriously? Are we still in high school? After said guest appealed his rescinded invitation to me and I told him that I wasn't willing to take a risk on having to babysit him on my wedding day, in a fit of maliciousness, he spilled the beans to Ann.

After I raged for a while, I decided to get on with life. In fact, the spilled beans simplified inviting my family (who weren't on Ann's original invite list) and let Ann and her girlfriends do their girlie things leading up to the wedding. And I still hadn't figured out how to deal with getting the marriage license when the secret got out of the bag. Virginia requires both parties to appear. How I was going to pull this off, I'm not sure. But I would have found a way; the clerk of the court is friend.

Because of the large number of photos, I have broken this post into five pieces, as follows:

    Pre-Game
    Food and Flowers
    The Ceremony
    Family
    Friends

This is a big shout out to all our friends and family who played along so gamely with the planned deception, cursed with us through its revelation, and rejoiced with us in our back yard on that beautiful day!



L to R, F to B, Row 1: Dennis Trimarchi, Melissa Williams, Mac Matthews, me, Tony Howe, Mike Hoffmaster. Row 2: Susan Williams, Kathy Matthews, Jennifer Sheen, Kelley Moffat, Ann, Ann Matthes, Shawn Armstrong, Mary Lou Matthews, Dimitri Galanis. Row 3: Marshall Williams, Bill McKenney, Donald Ragland, Mark Wallace, Dewie Sheen, Steve Wright, Cindy Barry, Terry Riney, Tom Matthes, Amanda Galanis, Maury Matthews, Billy Armstrong, Amy Williamson. Not pictured: David McLaughlin, Neil and Patty Seymour, Jim Sherry, Sandy Viera, Kenny Grandon and Melanie Natolie, Boo Snyder, Brittany Roberts and Ricky Shanholtz.

To everyone who came and especially those of you who traveled from all over the country to celebrate with us, thank you and we love you more than we can say. You made our day very special!

And finally, to everyone who contributed photos, Mike Hoffmaster, Maury Matthews, Steve Wright, and Terry Riney, I cannot thank you enough!