Dana is getting married!!

To begin, I will provide some background information about Dana, Joe, and their wedding. Dana and Joe dated for about a year and then were engaged this past spring. They planned their wedding in mid December after the school semester. In July, Dana found a dress and promptly ordered it from New York. As the school semester began, Dana was working three jobs and also going to school. Joe is a marine and is also going to school in Lincoln. On top of all that, Dana obviously had a wedding to plan. Thankfully, she had lots of assistance from family, friends, and extended relatives. When December rolled around, Dana had already gone to four wedding showers, sent out more than 200 invitations, chose the wedding colors, ordered bridesmaid dresses, and other very important wedding details. I don't know how she did it. All I can say is that you are an incredible sister, and I love you Dana!! :)

We were getting a little worried when thanksgiving came and Dana's dress still hadn't arrived. The first week of December passed with no sign of it. Dana had sent the dress designers several emails pleading for them to send it soon, or ELSE!! The "else" happened to be one of Joe's uncles that is fairly muscular and lives near New York City. hehe... The dress designers would be pleading for mercy if he had to come for a visit. I don't know what Dana wrote to them in those emails, but it really sent them scurrying to abide by her demands. On the 9th of December, the dress finally arrived with the wedding planned on the 18th. After trying the dress on, a few alternations were required before it could be useful. After a snip here and a strap there and there, the dress was ready for action! And boy was it ever stunning!! :)


Thursday night we had a wedding rehearsal and dinner planned at Zion PCA Church. It was supposed to start at 6 p.m. We arrived a little before six, but the traffic that night was horrendous. The rehearsal didn't start until closer to 6:30 because we were missing the maid of honor and a couple best men. They had all gotten stuck in traffic. :(

Finally the rehearsal began, and went mostly uneventful. I kept on forgetting where I stand, and Dad made a, what is now, famous mistake that sent us all giggling. I will describe this incident in a minute. I also had a very hard time relaxing and not acting tense while walking down the aisle. hehe... But my uncle saw me and helped me calm down and walk much more naturally.

Now to describe Dad's famous wedding blooper. After all the wedding party was up on stage, Dad came in with Dana and stood before Pastor Kerns. Pastor Kerns asked dad the usual question, "Who gives this women to be married to this man?" My dad confidently responded "My mother and I". haha... That was sooo funny!! Poor dad, I think he was a little embarrassed. The rest of the rehearsal went without a hitch.

Dad was determined to get Dana's wedding on video for posterity and memory sake. However we didn't have a functioning video camera. Dad sent out an email to the Zion email list asking to borrow someone else's camera, but didn't get any responses. He looked on craigslist and the ads to see if someone was giving away a nice one. Sadly, no one was. So that night, Dad and I went video camera shopping. Michael had recommended either a Canon or a Sony.

After finding the one we wanted at Target, we were disappointed that they were out of stock. But, that didn't stop us. hehe... I got on my blackberry and we began calling other Lincoln stores. We found that Best Buy had one left in stock but it was a boring grey color. Then Dad called the South Wal-Mart and was excited that they had one left in the blue color. So, about 10:30 that night, we hurriedly drove to Wal-Mart to claim our prize. It had 60 X optical zoom and a 60 gigabyte internal hard drive plus the extra capacity of memory sticks. YAY!!

That night we charged the battery and got it all ready for use the following day. The included battery only lasted 80 minutes. An additional battery would be purchased the next day at Best Buy. The next day was the wedding day - the 18th of December. A lot of preparations still needed attention. I was assigned helping Joe move into Dana's house, and be at the church at 1 p.m. for pictures.

I awakened fairly early that day to a bustle of activity. I left at around 9:15 to go to Joe's house. Joe's brothers and his best man were there to assist me. It was quite an interesting time. I had brought our truck and Joe had mostly everything strewn about his room. Packing someone else was rather entertaining. I did Joe a big favor and tossed random stuff into boxes. I figured that he had the rest of his life to unpack and we joked that we would put his shirts with his dishes. hehe... :)

If you haven't been to Dana's apartment, you wouldn't know that she is on the top floor and has a fairly narrow staircase leading up to her apartment. The biggest challenge for us was Joe's king sized bed. Joe claimed that there was no way we would be able to get it up the stairs, but Dana had faith that we would find someway to squeeze it up there. hehe... She was right, but not without busting a light bulb on the ceiling, and almost breaking a picture frame on the wall. We also used the mattress as an umbrella against the melting snow from the roof. But shhh.... don't tell them that!

After successfully getting Joe's boxes moved into Dana's apartment, I took a shower and we made a quick stop at Best Buy for another camera battery. Best Buy was very crowded. Finding parking was practically impossible. So I happily parked several stores to the north with our big extended cab truck and rushed in the store. It was about 1:10 and pictures were scheduled at 1:30. Lunch was put on the back burner and we rushed over to the church to get dressed into our tuxedos.

Next up... wedding pictures and ceremony!