Wedding Moments: The License

So many bloggable topics--the economy, politics, King David's wife Abigail (a future post)--but we just got the CD and rights to all of our wedding photos last week, so for me, this is definitely much more interesting than either the economy or politics and less time consuming than Abigail for now.

This is one of my favorite shots, because when I see it, all of the memories of that moment come back to me. I had come up with the brilliant idea of having our guests greet us out on the lawn of the church rather than have a traditional receiving line, and I had encouraged my wedding party and some of my guests that I knew well to head on over to the reception rather than stand around outside. But it ended up being a beautiful evening to be outside, so guests did linger.

After they had all headed over to the reception, someone reminded us that we needed to sign the license. Julie, my matron of honor, had already gone to the reception, but my minister, his wife, our best man, our photographer, and Henry and me, of course, remained behind to go into the council room and sign the license. While our guests were enjoying punch, fruit and vegetables, cheese and crackers, and, apparently, some of the warm food, we waited as my pastor's wife filled out--by hand--three copies of the marriage license, which Henry and I and our best man then signed.

We were excited, tired, hot, hungry, and giddy with happiness while we waited for Bev to finish writing. At one point, Henry reached over and grabbed my hand, and our photographer, Leda, quickly snapped this shot. Most of the pictures that feature my hands don't look very nice; we had just moved the week before, and my knuckles were scraped. This black and white shot doesn't show the scrapes, and it captures one of the happy moments of the day.