to Him be the glory: june the second

June the Second.

What a special day this will always be.

6.2.2012 :: The day I became one with my soul mater, my lover, and my best friend. The day we exchanged vows before God and our family and friends to love each other all the days of our lives. The day I realized I will never be alone again. The day I danced so hard our guests thought I may pass out, the day I sang 'brick house' on the microphone with our band SO loud our guests probably thought I was wasted (yet, had not a lick of alcohol except the champagne toast at our cake cutting, and the day that we drove away my uncle's bentley and arrived at our honeymoon night destination that we.....well. You know; that too. ;)

6.2.2013 :: We celebrated our first year of marriage! Wow how the time flew by. I became extremely sentimental and emotional on our first anniversary; which came to a surprise for me. I wasn't expecting it yet every time we looked at the clock, we would say "at this time last year we were......" and reminisced on our entire wedding day that way. How fun it was to look back through wedding pictures (heck we do that everyday anyways) - and talk about all of our fun times and memories. I love finding out little things that happened on that day that I was either blind to or was strictly kept hidden from me in order to maintain my cool composure. SUCH AS, my precious brother in law, Brian, who traveled with my sister and their 4 children from Asheville for the wedding. Their family just recently 'came clean' and confessed that somehow, his pants to his groomsmen suit got left behind at their home (4 hours away). Oh, and did I mention he realized this roughly 1.5 hours before he was supposed to be at the church for pictures? AND the suits were navy, which is very hard to match and can show up different shades in pictures! Well, he and Andrea made an emergency trip to Belk and found a pair of pants that were so perfect, I would've never known. Oh, how this story made me laugh (but would've made me cry had I known that day!) Oh yeah....and they instructed their four children that "Aunt Jackene will NEVER know about this incident...okay?" And every single one of them kept their secret ;)

In order to celebrate our one year anniversary, John planned a surprise overnight getaway to The Jefferson hotel in Richmond, Virginia. It was about 2.5 hours away which was just far enough to feel like we were getting away, but not too bad of a drive (we are driving pros, btw, after dating long distance for 2 years, and having ALL of our family 5-10 hours away). So 2.5 hours? Pssh....that's just like driving to the grocery store for us!

This. hotel. was. amazing. It is rated one of the top 5-star hotels in the country. Once you pull up, you see why immediately. It was founded in 1895 and is very historic. The architecture, building, layout, and artwork is stunning. Not to mention the dining experience we had at the hotel restaurant. To. die. for. The experience start to finish was better than any one year celebration I could've imagined. So nice to get away. So romantic. So relaxing. What a good man I have. (Shout out to Aunt Ruthie and Uncle Jeff for watching Noe while we were gone!)

On Sunday night, once we returned from our trip, we pulled out the top tier of our wedding cake from the freezer and did a cake tasting - one year later. It was actually still very good! Our cake was almond amaretto (SO good) and was still very m-o-i-s-t (you all know I have to spell that). Not dry at all (though it did have a tiny bit of refrigerated taste). We toasted with a bottle of wine (that was given to me with a collection of other "firsts" to celebrate by my Meredith girlfriends (shout out to Syd, Cash, Kathryn, Jodi, Katie, Ashley, and Hannah!) It was labeled our "first anniversary" bottle (among others were, first fight, first dinner party, wedding night, first christmas, etc). It has been SUCH a fun gift that just goes on and on! Though I am sad to say we are down to ONE bottle left....The baby bottle. So that one is safely tucked away in the cabinet for a while longer :)