September 27th, 2015

Hi friends,

Its not actually September 27th today, but it was five days ago, and also a year and five days ago. I want to share that day with all of you as promised, and right around the one year mark seems like a good time :)
I don't know anyone who thinks about their anniversaries to come when choosing their wedding date and I know we didn't, but I am soo glad we got married the weekend we did because it's the perfect time of year to celebrate. Fall is just beginning to make it's entrance, hitching a ride on the light breezes, painting the edges of leaves, and offering pumpkin spice at all the local coffee shops. It's still warm but you can sense the humidity giving up and you feel those subtle urges to unpack your sweaters. I never really paid attention to the last weekend in September before, but now i've decided it captures the actual moment the seasons are meeting and changing. On September 27th it is not summer anymore and it isn't quite autumn, and I love it.  This year it even hosted a blood moon, so i'm not sure that there is actually any room for debate at all, it's practically a perfect day, and definitely a great one to have an anniversary on every year.

2014's September 27th was a little warmer than this years but it still embodied everything I just described. It was no longer summer and not quite fall when I woke Rachel Landis, but went to sleep with a new name and my husband by my side.

It's funny when you are wedding planning, because everyone tells you it's all about you! And that's great because if i'm honest, I wanted it to be just the way I wanted it to be. But to be even more honest, I had to drop that way of thinking pretty early on in the planning process because it killed my creativity. I love crafting, I love planning events, decorating, envisioning and then seeing ideas become reality in surprisingly beautiful ways. These are a few of my favorite things ;). But i've never really done any of those things with just me in mind, they are usually gifts or events with a purpose outside myself; the whole "all about you" thing was really throwing me off. When I started thinking of our wedding as an opportunity to show and share God's love and beauty as it looks uniquely reflected through me and Steve and our love for each other, that's when wedding planning was the most fun and exciting.

The other really fun aspect to that was enlisting our friends and family to help out with certain pieces of our day. I really want to articulate this well because it added so much depth and beauty to our day and I cherish the feeling that came from it...The last week before our wedding was superr busy for me, wrapping up a lot of the DIY details I really wanted to include. Some of that was done with friends and family but a  lot of it was me running around in "lets get this done" mode and not stopping. It was the kind of creative exhaustion that I love, but it was exhausting, and I almost forgot that there were a lot of other people doing the same thing for me, for us, for that day. My mom and dad especially, but also so many of our friends working on little things we had given them that I didn't have anything to do with anymore. When I saw the hoopa that my mom and dad and my aunts had crafted, the flowers that Trish and Lindy and Donna had put together, the reception room that Jake and Lindy and Liz and Arthur and Kate and others that decorated, the program that jake had designed, the bracelet Katie made for me, the songs that Ashley and Brendan and Debbie were singing, the little cameras my mom in law got for the reception, the photos that Megan captured, the favors that Emily had printed, the hors d'oeuvres that Rachel had prepared, the speeches that Britt and Luke and Debbie and Brian wrote, and so many other beautiful pieces that others had contributed; it was an overwhelming sense of being loved and surrounded and supported. It completely lifted any weight that I had put on myself the week before to make things perfect. It was all just a gift to us and it blessed me in such a deep way.

 But there was something else that overswept (made that word up) even that feeling. It was what our Father did. I can tell you that I was nervous in the months leading up to our wedding, I was worried that I wouldn't feel the way I wanted, or be stuck somewhere besides in the moment, that it would rain just so I would have to learn to be okay with it and trust God anyway. I had a lot of disaster wedding dreams, I hate to admit it but its very true. The fear was strong, I can be pretty anxious at times, in case you didn't know it, but i'm almost crying right now because God's love is so. much. stronger. And never have I known it so tangibly as on our wedding day. I know to some people who were there it was just a really beautiful day, a really really nice wedding, and to others like my mom, it was an answer to very specific heartfelt prayers. To me it was an unimaginable answer to a prayer that never even made it up out of those deep recesses of my heart that needs certain affirmation and reassurance and peace. He was just so present. I'm not sure i'll be able to describe it but almost like all of our friends and family I listed, bringing their gifts to make things beautiful, God himself brought the most beautiful day, clear skies and sunshine, a perfectly timed breeze and shower of leaves for everyone to see Him in. No amount of planning could have assured that, none of our friends could have given that, it was just a gift from our Faithful Creator. And as if that wasn't enough, in an act of extravagant love towards me, there were two BALD EAGLES circling in the sky above us. I mean you don't plan that, you don't even hope for that, never in my wildest dreams did I expect that kind of gift. You have to understand, I have a thing with birds of prey, especially with bald eagles, and it's no secret to my Father, he knows how much I love them, how I see his strong beauty so vividly in their sharp eyes and detailed feathers. They are a form of love language we have between us.

I don't think of the bald eagles at our wedding as some kind of sign, they are much more special to me than a sign. They were a gift, just a gift of love from God saying He was present and He was smiling over us and He was the one bringing us together. And saying that He isn't like that, how I had thought of Him, he isn't always testing and putting us through things just to see what were made of, like if I could trust him on our wedding day in the rain. He lavishes love. And when we walked down the grassy aisle as man and wife and greeted each person present who came down after us, I could hear it and feel it in each of their comments about the day and the ceremony and the beauty they were breathing in. I knew it was all Him blessing us and blessing them.

I absolutely love looking through our wedding pictures and have done so a lot this year. Probably every day at first but I still do frequently. I love the colors and the trees, the sun rays and my blue shoes. I love Steve's smiles and my mom's all natural gray hair. I love all the faces and all the hearts there with us. I love my new family and my since forever family. Somehow Megan caught all the best expressions and even managed to get the right people with the right expressions in the background of each shot. She's amazing.
I love remembering practicing singing our song together in the meadow the day before, and the surprise when all of sudden people started showing up for the rehearsal and this was really happening. I love remembering that night Debbie and I were writing name cards on swiss maps for hours in the dark on the porch, and everyone squeezing into one long table at Appalation Brewing Company after dinner. I love that Frances did my make up outside and that Katrina could do my hair and that South Africa's national flower ended up in our bouquets.
I love remembering walking down the yard aisle with my dad without a trace of fear in my heart and speaking my vows knowing I was facing the one man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.