The Upstate Under Your Nose: June 11, 2010: A Retrospective

The Lodge

A couple weekends ago Chris, Ivan, a kidnapped child, and I went on an adventure. We hiked at Jones Gap State Park and listened to bluegrass at The Lodge at Table Rock State Park. We have shared plenty of our feelings regarding Table Rock State Park here, here, and here but today I would like to go back almost two years and talk about a bigger event (at least for us).

On June 11, 2010 I married the most amazing woman in the whole wide world at The Lodge at Table Rock State Park. We were married in one of the most beautiful places in South Carolina in front of the best group of people on Earth. I am not exaggerating when I say that not a day has passed since we said “I do” that we do not think of that day. Revisiting the site a few weeks ago sparked a flow of emotions that we feel compelled to share on this website.

Ivan is thoroughly disgusted

Fear not, as I promise not to make this just another cheesy love story. I am not going to bore you with sappy stories about how we fell in love and how lucky I am to be married to my soul mate. I will resist the urge to tell you a great tale about our first hike together at Table Rock State Park and why it was the only place in the world that would suitably host our wedding. I will keep the story of the best wedding cake ever made to myself and its consumers… for now.

Instead, we want to brag about how cool our friends and family are.

This being the second marriage for both of us, we decided to keep things small. We quickly discovered that “small” is more challenging that we expected. We should invite him, they probably want to come, and surely she expects an invitation.

No thanks. This was our day so we played by our rules. Instead of inviting anybody and everybody that we knew, we invited the people that have helped to make us who we are today.

We invited our families that knew us when we were in diapers and our friends that will be there when we might need diapers again*. As we celebrated the fact that that we chose to spend the rest of our lives together, we wanted to spend the day with the people that will be there with us on our journey through that life. The result was that at the end of the weekend we realized just how important every single person that we invited means to us.

When we visited The Lodge a few weekends ago Ivan asked if he could show his friend Blue where “Daddy and Ms. Chris got married”. We watched from the balcony as he showed her the exact place where the three of us stood as we became a new family together. We were too far away to hear his exact explanation of things but judging by his pointing and gesturing he seemed to be telling her about how everything was set up and where he made his big entrance to the party. Considering how long he kept her down there, he must have made one hell of a story out of it.

Patiently waiting...

We stood on the balcony and as we watched Ivan tell his tale, we pictured the scene he was drawing for his friend. Beyond the tables and chairs, however, we were reminded of the work our friends put into setting everything up for us. We were actually forbidden from lifting a finger on our wedding day as our friends arrived at 10 AM to spend the day moving furniture and setting up decorations. Earlier in the week other friends demanded custody of Ivan so we could attend to pre-wedding business without the responsibility of taking care of a five year old. We were honored by how much time and money people spent to take off work and travel halfway across the country to share our day (and in some cases the week) with us. We were at times shocked by our friends that stood up in front of total strangers and bared their souls as they spoke in support of our love. We remembered the people that could not be there but they never left our hearts.

This was not a conventional wedding and the friends and family that we invited is not a conventional crowd. Nobody came to our wedding simply because we sent them an invitation offering up great food and an open bar. They came because they were happy to be there, they wanted to be there, and they were eager to help with the party. In all honesty, I would say that most of them would have been a part of our wedding whether they were invited or not… and that is why we love them.

Chris and I had a small wedding with less than 50 people invited and almost all of them attending. There or not, every one of those people means the world to us. I hope we properly thanked them all individually but I doubt that we can ever thank them enough.

So anyways, call this a sappy, sentimental, and in some cases belated thank you to everybody that made June 11^th 2010 the best day ever. More importantly, thank you to our friends and family that are there for us every step of the way. Our lives would not be the same without every single one of you and not a day goes by that we do not appreciate the fact that we have you to share to it with. Every single time our car faces northwest and we see the Blue Ridge Mountains less than 45 minutes away, we think of you. Thanks for being there for us.

Love, Brett & Chris

*We promise not to ask you to change them, though.