StoryTimeSaturday: The wedding edition, Part one

Wedding photos by Chris Franz

Troy and I got married on 1.1.11. Despite our marriage being a dream come true, our actual wedding week was a bit of a nightmare.

By the time December rolled around, I was sick of people questioning my rationale for having a winter wedding in western Minnesota / eastern North Dakota. (For those of you unfamiliar with Fargo, it sits on the border of North Dakota and Minnesota. Our sister city, Moorhead is just across the Red River in Minnesota). But I have always thought winter here is so beautiful and magical, and the thought of starting the new year out as a newlywed was such a romantic notion.

By Christmas, the meteorologists were predicting a doozy of a blizzard for the weekend of our wedding. That doozy came a few days early and was followed by an even doozier doozy of a blizzard the next day. Back-to-back blizzards, even in North Dakota, are pretty unlikely. The entire state was basically shut down from Dec. 28 to Jan. 2. A 100-car pileup on the interstate left the roads closed for just as long.

I cried a few times, had a few bridal breakdowns, and I admit that it's sometimes still hard for me to talk about. I put so much thought and work into every aspect of our wedding — as most brides do — and it's still hard that we had a perfect wedding that only about a fourth of our guests were able to experience. So this series is partly therapeutic. For the next eight Saturdays, I'm going to share just a small part of my wedding with you: the invitations, the photos, the decor, my dress, my makeup, my wedding party, the music and the dance.