One year later...

Well its me again...thought I'd post a few final thoughts and express some feelings upon the one-year anniversary of My First Daughter's Wedding! (And I really mean final this time!)

First I would like input -- if anyone is out there following this.  I am considering publishing this blog into an edited hard cover memento of the wedding for my family's eyes only, and "canning" the online version.  Is that a bad idea?  Is this blog really helping anyone?  My blog host statistics show me there have been considerable hits, but there haven't been an abundance of comments.  I never bothered to monetize the blog anyway; it was mostly here for me as an outlet.  And it concerns me when I see some of the search terms that people were using which landed them on my blog.  (Lets just say - there are some messed up people out there, and I don't necessarily relish the thought of them reading my blog or viewing my family wedding photos.)

So it's been a year or so since the wedding day.  I am happy to report that the kids are still happily married, relocated to Colorado, and are settling into a new apartment and new jobs.  They just completed a big trip to Europe (Germany and Austria), echoing what my husband and I did in the first year or so after we got married.  Jamaica was also one of the stops on their honeymoon cruise; my husband and I honeymooned in Jamaica too -- so there are a couple of travel bonds we have shared.

We got to visit with my daughter and her husband the day before their anniversary, and they said they planned to eat the top tier of the wedding cake, obligatorily saved from the wedding.  We talked to them soon after and they reported the same thing we experienced; the cake was so stale and freezer-burned that they could barely eat a few bites of it.  My daughter made chocolate chip cookies instead!  Maybe some old time-honored wedding traditions need to be reviewed....!!

Now that I have some time and distance and life has progressed in between, the majority of my memories of the wedding are still good.  There are a few things I still would have tweaked, but even the things I groused about have faded.  Looking at the wedding photos again as part of the 1 year anniversary observation, (at least the high-res versions rather than the low-res); I honestly thought..."Well they aren't THAT bad after all..."  I am sorry to say that we didn't get around to getting wedding photos made into prints until just before our kids visited us just a week ago; and the wedding slide show set to music and memory book that I had planned have never come to be.  (My daughter did publish a very nice memory book using Shutterfly and I simply ordered a copy of her book for us!)  Our photography team has since retired, and I still think the world of them, so I really hope they have a very happy ever after!

The wedding binder is actually still intact -- I haven't gotten around to filing anything away.  I did crunch the final budget numbers; and well...I'm just glad that part is in the past now and the Good Lord provided the means to pay for it. 

Now that our younger daughter has basically moved out for good though, we are truly Empty Nesters, and the house is in need of a "purging" and organization on a scale we haven't approached in a while.  The wedding binder contents will get filed away this year, I vow!   Some of our furniture has disappeared, bequeathed to the daughters...so rooms need to be re-arranged, re-decorated and re-purposed.  I think that is what will be occupying my time in the coming years (other than my job, of course.)  I also have discovered Pinterest...and oh my, the time I can waste on that...

Retirement is not too far away; my DH and I are starting to kick around options for that.  One day I still hope to at least have a small part in planning the Second Daughters Wedding (utilizing Pinterest, of course), and grandchildren may come along in the meantime...I hope not TOO soon!  I want my First Daughter and her husband to relish these first few years of marriage, focusing on eachother.

I still have not started another blog. I'm still exploring my options there. But if and when I do, and if this blog is still up and running, I promise I will post the link!

I wish you, my Dear Readers, (if there are any) health and blessings!