CRUNCH TIME
First, I think it's important to touch on the fact that I had decided to pray by myself and with friends and family every day for the 40 days leading up to the day of the wedding. It would have taken a lot more discipline than I have to actually accomplish that, but I prayed quite a bit. Of course, I prayed for our marriage - that we would love each other unconditionally, walk in the Word together, and see eye to eye on the Lord's mission for our lives, but most of my prayer was focused on the ceremony. I wanted a ceremony that honored God more than it honored us. I wanted to make sure that everyone who came to our wedding knew who God was in our lives when they left. I asked God to make Himself greater than us, and to show everyone in attendance how loving and sovereign He is. Looking back on that, maybe I should have discussed some hopes of what that might NOT look like, but at that time, I wasn't really thinking He was going to answer those prayers through a hurricane!
On the week of the wedding I started checking the weather every few hours. Hurricane Joaquin was inbound and there was a strong front stalled over the coast of South Carolina promising a week-long rain storm. For some reason though, I had my trust in the weatherman who for some reason didn't want to commit and kept changing the chance of rain for Saturday (wedding day) anywhere from 40% to 100%. As the day approached we had to start making arrangements for Plan B. (Plan A was to have our ceremony under a couple large oak trees at a plantation with the reception beneath a tent 100 feet from the location of the ceremony). Plan B was to rent an additional tent to cover the location of the ceremony. We settled on the fact that it was going to rain on the wedding day and decided to move forward with Plan B.
As I considered my fiance and her wedding day, I realized that rain for the ceremony wasn't the thing that would bother her the most, but that she would just want to have cute pictures! And she would be sure that the rain was going to ruin them! One big thing that I shared with Laura was that everyone always hopes to have a perfect wedding, but there's always someone or something that happens to take away from that. Well, in this case, something had happened, and it was totally outside of our control. We couldn't blame anyone, or even really be upset. I decided to try to take control as much as possible, so I had a quick conversation with our photographer, who is also a good friend of ours, and asked her if she could work with some umbrellas and rain boots. (I may have consulted Pinterest to see if it would work well). She thought it was an awesome idea! So, I contacted the maid-of-honor and asked her if she could have the girls get boots. Then, found out we already had some clear umbrellas, but asked my parents to go out and buy some more just in case. After a few hours and a handful of different stores, all they could find were about 8 black umbrellas, so they bought those and added them to the hurricane-survival stash.
REHEARSAL
On Friday I hung out with the groomsmen on Folly Beach (a barrier island along the SC coast). We had a pretty lazy morning, then walked to a lighthouse where the waves were crashing on shore higher than I'd ever seen before and took some fun pictures in the storm. After that we went out to my favorite restaurant for brunch (Black Magic Cafe), then a few of us played some football on the beach with some of Laura's family while the others got ready for the rehearsal. Rain was intermittent, but not very strong throughout the day.
The rest of us got back to the house, quickly got showered and dressed for the rehearsal, then we all headed over to the plantation. The ground at the plantation was already completely saturated. In order to walk from the parking area to the tent we had to walk through a few inches of water or hop, skip and jump with hopes of not getting soaked feet. We had a quick run-through in the tent, then hung out for a little while before driving across Charleston to the location of the rehearsal dinner. As we hung out, water was running off the grass onto the concrete pad of the tent and forming puddles and rivers through the tent. I tried to fight my worry and the concerns of my dad knowing that everything would be okay, and trusting that that would be the worst it got. We got to the rehearsal dinner without having any trouble getting through downtown Charleston, which is often too flooded to drive through if a storm is combined with high tide. Dinner was awesome and I shared a few words with the bridal party to ensure them that we were going to have an awesome wedding, and to charge them with the task of being a part of making it awesome. Everything closed down after a fun time with family and friends. My groomsmen wanted to see where I was living, so we drove a little out of the way to stop by my house. At this point Laura knew she was going to be wearing boots, so I picked up some boot socks for her, as well as the ring, which I had originally forgotten to bring with me with the storm creeping in! Grateful the guys were down to make the trip out to the house!
WEDDING DAY
Laura had gotten a pretty nasty cold a few days before the wedding, and I noticed it coming on me as I fell asleep the night before the wedding, but it was just another thing I didn't have any control over. I slept pretty sound other than waking up a few times to blow my nose. I was the first awake in the house the next morning - probably due to the fact that I was actually from this time zone, used to waking up early to go to the gym before work, and I probably had a few nerves building up some adrenaline. I sat down in the living room and started reading the Bible for a little while as the rain continued to come down outside. After doing that for a while, one of my groomsmen's wives woke up and come visited for a while. I needed a minute with God, so found some shelter under the stilted house and prayed for a while that He would protect us physically, but also emotionally. After praying to the point of finding a lot of peace, I went back inside to hang out with whoever was awake. My groomsman, Dan, was up and had mentioned going out for a ride to talk about the day. As that was about to start taking place, I got a call from my mother-in-law that the venue was flooding and not much other than a large truck would be able to cross an area of water in order to get to the tent. I tried to tell her everything would be okay, then we got off the phone as we tried to determine if it was really a big deal or not. Shortly after, I gave her a call and suggested driving to the venue to see if we could get there and determine what another 4 inches of rain might look like. She thought it was a good idea, so I grabbed Dan, picked up Laura's mom and started driving to the venue.
There are only a few streets that run parallel to the beach on Folly Island, and they were closing down a few of them when we were leaving due to flooding. A little further from the beach the road to the island was also gaining quite a bit of water. I started fearing that maybe my decision to leave the island was going to cause me to be separated from my bride on our wedding day. I asked Dan to call the guys and instruct them to pack up everything they had at the rental house and leave the island. Then, I decided I needed to call Laura and break the news to her. I called her a few times before she finally picked up. I noticed when she answered that she had just woken up. As calmly as possible, I told her that her and the bridesmaids needed to pack up all their stuff and leave the island so they didn't get stuck. She seemed to understand and got things moving right away.
As we're making these phone calls, our pastor called to see what our plan was and if he could help in any way. As I'm on the phone with him we drove passed a manhole cover in the street that was getting pushed up out of the manhole from the pressure of water below! There were areas of the road that already had 4-6" of water on them, and we drove passed a few houses where cars were soon going to experience some water damage from rising water. He said he'd start checking around to see if he could come up with other options. We kept driving toward the venue, all while I'm trying to come up with the best solution for a Plan C. Who would have thought we needed a Plan C?!?! We ended up getting about 4 miles from the venue when we crossed through an area of the road that already had 3-4 inches of water on it, and the rain wasn't supposed to slow down. I made the call that we would have to change venues and we started letting everyone know.
Laura used words to let me know that she got off the island with the girls. I emphasize that she used words, because there were a lot of other emotions I pulled from a short conversation on the phone, and I really wanted to lead her away from those however I could! The girls had stopped a couple places, but ended up a Chic-fil-a where they were waiting to know where they could start the process of getting ready. I had instructed my groomsmen to get to the condo my dad was staying in near the entrance to Folly Beach, so that I could easily get to them. After talking with Laura I wasn't sure they were as easy to get to as I hoped, so we headed there in the truck to get with everyone and let them know we were going to go to Chic-fil-a and at least have the wedding party all together.
We got to the condo and I quickly said hi to two of my uncles and my parents, and we decided the best move would to have them come with us because we couldn't tell what another few inches of rain would do to the road to the island. The groomsmen came with me to Chic-fil-a and my parents followed shortly after.
We got to Chic-fil-a and went inside where I could tell my bride was extremely sad, stressed out, and worried about what her wedding day was turning into. I tried my best to keep her hopes up and let her know that as long as the wedding party is together, we can still have a really fun and great wedding. The guys tried to get me to eat something, but the stress of the day wasn't going to allow any food to get into my stomach. After trying to organize a little more and reach out to whoever I could think of, one of the guys asked me if I needed anything. I said no, but then immediately changed my mind and decided we needed to ask the Lord for some help on this. We packed 7 or 8 guys into my truck and all took a turn asking God for an answer on a location for the wedding and to bless the wedding party with some peace of mind.
We got back inside, where I was reminded that we needed an answer of where we were having the wedding so that the florist and caterer knew where to go. I was in the process of texting Pastor Josh to see if he had come up with anything and my phone started vibrating with his name on the screen! I started talking to him, excited for the news he may have for me. I had a strong feeling that with our church involved, our church family would be able to come up with something great. He had already mentioned to me previously that day that we could have the ceremony at the church, but did not think that we could have the reception there. We have a large church with three different "venues". There's a main sanctuary, but then we also have a smaller venue we call the Chapel which has more of a church feel to it, and the Warehouse, which is where our youth service takes place. The church has plenty of space to host a wedding, but they have a church service on Saturday evenings that was still going to be happening. Josh told me he had talked to the youth pastor, another friend of ours, and asked if he thought it was okay to move the youth service for the night since they didn't expect as many people because of the storm - and he was all about it! So, we were going to get married at Seacoast Church - a church that we both call home and love, and we were going to get to have the reception in the same, very safe and very dry building!
It wasn't the pretty plantation with the awesome spanish-moss covered oak trees, but we had a spot! As I got off the phone I noticed some firemen talking to my bride's mother. They overheard everything that was going on and had offered to help rescue anything from the island that we may have needed. We had everything accounted for, so we asked for some instructions on the best route to the church and we all took off.
Now... we left as soon as I heard we were going to have the ceremony at the church. I expected to get there and have to figure out where to start with getting things set up... well, our florist is also the mother of one of Laura's bridesmaids, and she's my new best friend! Two of Laura's bridesmaids and the florist are already at church setting things up when we get there! I'm in the process of trying to breathe still, but still really stressed. I expected to be in and out - in route to a hotel where the guys had rented some rooms where we could get ready. Nope, Mari had other plans. She got us all together and asked me to pray. What a blessing it was to slow down and once again be reminded that it was all in God's hands! After I prayed she walked us through a short time of de-stressing and speaking some truth into us. Taking time with the Lord throughout the day definitely helped to ease the stresses and worries of all the plan changes that happened, and helped us remember that we could trust Him. I asked some friends, who I love dearly, but were not in the bridal party to stay behind and help set up the reception, then went with the rest of the groomsmen to the hotel to get ready.
Once we got to the hotel I quickly showered and got ready, then spent a few minutes on my best man's computer updating our wedding website in case anyone checked it to see if we had relocated or changed plans. I also spent some time texting friends who wouldn't had known that the location had changed from anyone else, then we headed back to the church to finish getting ready in front of the photographer before taking some pre-ceremony pics!
FIRST LOOK
The whole time we were getting ready I kept thinking of more and more things that I had planned to do earlier in the day. I think I had a few minutes to remember that I was about to get married, but until the photographer came to get me for the "first look", I hadn't really had the space to think about it. They walked me outside and placed me in a spot where I had to sit and wait for Laura to walk up behind me. While I was standing there, it finally started to hit me - this was it! Today was the day, and my future wife was about to come up behind me shining like a star on the rainiest day of our lives! Turning around to see her smiling face after all we had been through that morning was an awesome moment that I'll never forget! I'm hoping that if I grow old and do forget, someone will have a picture to remind me!
I honestly don't remember much of what happened between that moment and when I was in a tiny room next to the pulpit praying with my guys and stuffing my pockets with tissue that I expected to need during the ceremony - to blow my nose of course! After praying, we just sat and hung out for a little bit as a couple of the guys left to walk the VIPs down the aisle. I could barely hear Laura's cousins playing music through the door, but it sounded great and I can't wait to watch it on the video!
We walked out and stepped into our places in front of our guests when the time finally came. Due to the circumstances of the day, we had already seen and spent time with about half of them! That definitely takes a lot of pressure off of trying to appear perfect. We chose to take communion together during the ceremony, which was an awesome time for just the two of us to get together with Josh and take the moment in, invite God into it, and honor Him through the action. Shortly after going back to our spot in front of the guests, we recited our written vows to each other, added some rings on our fingers, and I got the instruction to kiss my bride! At which point I remembered our other pastor talking about how cute it is for everyone in the audience to see the kiss, but how awkward it is to see all that passion jump out for the guy standing a foot away - so I made sure to put it on her with as much passion as I was willing to share in front of my family!
We had prayed that the rain would let up for the ceremony, and well... it had! Unfortunately, we weren't more specific, and it had rained up until it and started slightly after, but we had a good amount of fairly dry weather to take some outdoor pictures! (I really think that God is trying to teach me to pray more specifically for things).
The reception hall AKA the warehouse that has graffiti on the walls and games all over the balcony, looked amazing! The team that got thrown together to help decorate had done an amazing job and transformed a high school hangout into a beautiful reception hall - you only saw the high school hangout if you were looking for it. We had some tasty food, danced to some good music DJ'd by the one and only DJ Hey DJ, and had an awesome time with all the friends and family that were able to celebrate with us! It almost seemed that our guests were hand-picked to be present, as I noticed some made it from California, one made it from China, many from Wisconsin and other states, but many were not able to make it that live within 20 miles of the church due to impassable roads.
We woke up the next morning to a foot of water in the backyard, and a little time to waste before getting on a plane for South Africa! I think this is enough blog for a while, so stay tuned to my social media accounts for a video story of our trip!
Love ya'll!
