but I loved her first, and I held her first and a place in my heart will always be hers

~heartland

so, this weekend was crazy full, and I've gotta break it into more than one blog or I'll never find the time to do it!

friday night matt and I hurry-hurry-hurried to marla and justin's hitching. it was outdoors, the weather was BEAUTIFUL and we had a wonderful time! and marla looked gee-orgeous!

and matt and I totally lucked out. we'd met her cousins darci and mike at the engagement party, and we sat with them at the wedding. we also managed to score the third best table at the place (the other two were reserved) and sat with darci & mike, the friends that justin invited (jennifer & travis) and darci's dad. So it was the young-people table of sorts, and I was totally pleased. And Darci volunteered some excellent perspective on life in general (they are adopting a baby boy who will arrive in ~6 weeks and they were the last of their friends to get married).

I danced. I drank a lot of wine. I ate yummy food. I even branched out and had some appetizer thingie that had portabello mushrooms on it. Bubbles were blown, cake was eaten and laughter was everywhere. Marla's daddy gave a great toast, and we were reallyreally glad to be there celebrating with them. AND the songs they danced to were wonderful. Marla and her dad danced to the song from Heartland and sang it to each other and afterwords someone who I assume was a grandparent or old family friend said loudly to her dad "that's a girl that sure loves her daddy!" I seriously teared up watching them. And she and Justin were adorable, all smiley and cute. And her mother looked fantastic in her silver blue dress and jacket, and she seriously talked about how she had never had cleavage before in her life. my friend's mom talking about her cleavage--too funny!

and here are pictures. Clearly Marla's in the white and Justin's in the tux. There's one of the three KDs that were there, one of us doing shout, one where Marla and I danced, etc. People really got their groove on, and that was fun to see. Oh, and I learned about a gary fong, which is a really cool flash attachment that I do believe will soon be arriving at the home of a carrie you know. :)

anyway, pictures.

oh. and while we were taking pictures (matt kindly took quite a few while I was dancing with the girls) matt turned to me and said "I've realized something tonight. What I think is a smile isn't *actually* a smile--not in pictures, and not next to you. I've got to over-smile or it looks like I'm not at all." You can probably look at his smile in the pictures and determine whether or not they were taken after this epiphany. ha! we got home around 1100 and FINALLY got some sleep that we both reallyreally needed!