Wedding Date on Sep 2, 2017

We met on an online dating website in November 2015. Neither of us were looking for anything long-term since we had both been divorced (Vic's being more recent). I was starting my new career and he was finishing up his in the military. We were both just looking for someone to get to know and enjoy their company before we started the next chapter in our own lives. I don't think we expected that it meant starting it together. Honestly it happened quickly and we realized what we had. It first started out with a phone date that lasted 3 hours, followed by a FaceTime date that lasted 4 hours. And then for our official first date, Vic drove 90 minutes to meet me for biscuits and donuts. We fell in love 10 days later and have been inseparable in our adventure since. We got engaged the following year, October 2016 on Pilot Mountain. It was a climbing/hiking/camping trip that we took with Mari and our dog Balboa (who has since passed and waiting at the rainbow bridge). Balboa, who I've had since he was 4 weeks old when I was in college, was pretty old and barely tolerated the hike. We got a little lost trying to get to our climbing routes from our hike and Balboa was struggling in the surprisingly warm day we were having. Vic had planned to do it while I was climbing, but his plans were derailed when we realized we needed to get back to camp to let Balboa rest. Instead, he asked to take a family picture at one of the lookout points and afterwards, turned the camera to video and gave it to Mari. She didn't know he was proposing so it was a really nice surprise for all of us. We have this footage somewhere. He proposed, with our little family all there and I ugly-cried for like an hour. We LOVED our wedding. Actually, present tense, we still love our wedding. We tried to keep things simple with no wedding party. Having my dad up there with me was a nice surprise, even with holding the umbrella. We wanted an outdoor ceremony and I am fortunate enough to have friends that love me enough to make it happen. They went to every store in the area (tiny town) and bought all of the umbrellas they could find. I think we ended up having like 50+ umbrellas. We wanted to make the wedding about things we loved - our family, our friends, good food and drink - in a 3 day celebration. We did an open invite for our dinner rehearsal Friday, wedding Saturday, and "hangover" brunch Sunday. A lot of the things we made - from brewing 4 types of beer and 2 types of wine, to hand-making a lot of the decorations. I learned calligraphy to do the place card names. Vic did a lot of wood working to do the games, post with signs where everyone is from, coolers, etc. Mari even helped make the backdrop for 'selfie station' as well as some of the other crafts. His mom made homemade jam for the guest bags. Every detail was really thought about with good and memorable intention. We hoped for a sunny but cool, but got an even better misty rain mountain day. It was magic and I couldn't have pictured it any other way.