A Cold Wedding

2008 was a busy year of weddings for me...normally I would have one or two weddings a year, but this year I had six with three of them happening in the last three months of the year. The October wedding was beautiful it happened rather quickly... I found out about it about a month before, I had some time to meet a few times with the couple. The wedding happened a day before my birthday. Then the November wedding I learned about it almost 10 days before the wedding day. I like these quick weddings actually... the couple is ready to get to the point a lot faster than those who plan for a year or two...lol..

We planned the whole November wedding via e-mail...it was great... I chatted to the Bride a few times on the phone, but had not met them until the night before their wedding day. The original plan was for the ceremony to happen outside overlooking the lake in Osyoos...for the most part Osyoos is one of the warmest towns in BC...but in November? I just didn't know how it was going to be. Not only that, but the Dept. of Hwys had been working on twinning the highway between Penticton and Summerland...for whatever reason the mountain decided to come down and block the road a few days before the wedding was to take place... all of a sudden the games began...which route would we take? It is only a 3 hour trip from where I live to the Osyoos, but the alternate route offered to us was via a logging road that would be 2 solid hours of dirt and mud...I wasn't overly thrilled about that trip...in the end we decided to take the longer route and had a fantastic trip...

Thankfully the couple decided to have their ceremony inside...what a total relief as it was it very windy and cold when we arrived... I met the couple for the first time, we scanned the room, talked about how the ceremony would be and that was it until the next day...

That November wedding turned out to be one of the most enjoyable ones of 2008...

Just when I thought I was done for the year, with Christmas plans approaching quickly another couple emailed saying that they wanted to get married within 2 weeks... we quickly met, scanned some ceremonies I had done in the past, chose one and then began to make plans of where the wedding would take place...

This is where the fun began... the couple choose the Train Station replica downtown Armstrong... an OUTDOOR wedding on December 5th at 4pm! Yes you read that correctly... and OUTDOOR wedding in December...it was absolutely beautiful... the day prior there wasn't a piece of snow on the ground...the next day everything was white...the train station was decorated for Christmas...L.E.D lights...may save electricity...but they are pitts when it comes to providing enough light to see the words of the wedding Ceremony. We put up a couple of decorative lamps it was sooooooo pretty. What I had not planned on was the fact that at 4 pm it can get really dark really fast... as I said the L.E.D. lights are pitts when it comes to brightness...and midway into the Grooms Vow I realized I didn't have my glasses and it was dark...given I had done a few weddings in the past we completed the rest of the ceremony from memory... no one knew anything different... it was great!

Thank you Rod and Stephanie, Rich and Deanna, Tyler and Christine for allowing me to end 2008 with such fantastic memories! Ty and Chris...an outdoor wedding in December was a first...I love it!!!!

Christmas Ponderings

So here we are dab in the center of another Christmas Season and as usual everyone is busy getting ready for the BIG day. Isn't it interesting that Christmas has evolved into a month long event? I always chuckle when someone asks me, "If I am ready for Christmas"... ready?... I have spent a whole month planning and running...ready? You mean for December 25th? If you haven't noticed there is way more things happening BEFORE the 25th than there is after. The 25th is the day that Christmas ends not begins. By the time the 25th rolls around all the Christmas parties are over, the shopping is done, except for those who wait until Boxing Day to return what they don't like and pick through the already picked over... ready? (What does that mean anyway?) December 25th will come like it does every year and we will do whatever it is that we do like we have done every year before and it will be just fine...ready or not.

As a kid, on Christmas Day we would wake up early, open our presents, have breakfast, figure out where the million pieces go and wonder why there were extra pieces ...I love Christmas, don't you? such fun especially when there was lots of snow...

I read somewhere a few weeks ago that there was only ONE Christmas and the rest are anniversaries. That statement caused me to stop and ponder...like a weddng? a birthday? an opening? There is one initial day and the ones to follow are times to remember the glory of, the history altering moment, the forever change, the day that you will always look back on with joy...the day when the course of the future, your future forever changed.

Most us do it every year, and we do it without thinking about it...for some reason we take Jesus and make Him a baby all over again. But we don't do that that on our anniversaries do we? When we come together on significant days in our lives we celebrate maturity, experience, accomplishments and successes. Maybe, that is what we need to be doing then this Christmas...instead of reducing Jesus to a needy, imbecilic baby, we need to rather see Him for who He really is...Savior, Lord, Healer, Friend...now that is something to ponder isn't it?

Merry Christmas

PB