happy mother's day

My mom is the greatest, the prettiest, the smartest and the wisest person I know.

My sister's and I had the raddest childhood thanks to her...I hope I have her knack for motherhood someday.

Here she is on her wedding day in 1980 - having a good laugh up on the alter (she's quick to smile, has the most wonderful sense of humor, and a great sense of adventure...check out these delightful pics of her living in Paris in the 60's).

When my parents got married, she could have written the book about practical weddings. Both of them are from the same small town in the midwest...so they had a guest list that could have included everyone they knew (all 13,000 residents I'm sure). But, they whittled it down to a couple hundred of their nearest and dearest...huge families...huge. Both of them had grown up attending the church in which they were married, and even went to that Catholic grade school as children (yes, they knew each other as kids...my dad swears he fell in love with her when she was in 4th grade...when he tells that story it makes me *smile*).

My mom wore a knee length linen dress, carried a single rose and they each had their closest relative as their attendants (my mom's brother was her best man!). Their reception was held in a new restaurant that was located in an old bank. Each of the bank vaults held a different station of food: shrimp, lobster, yumyumyummmy wines, etc. Since the restaurant was new they got a smokin' deal on having it there - around $500 for everything. (wtf... yea....seriously). Their wedding cake was a gift from a baker friend who made each guest a small individual cake. There was no assigned seating (umm...actually...there was no seating at all...perhaps a table or two for the older relatives), music, yet no live band, no DJ...people walked among the different food stations, visited with each other, laughed together, got to know each other (though honestly everybody pretty much did know each other = small town). To this day, aunts, uncles, great aunts/uncles and cousins (on both sides of the family), swear up and down that my parent's had the greatest (and funnest!) wedding they have ever been to!

The only thing that my parents wish they would have done differently was to hire a professional photographer. See, one of my dad's brother's was in college and had a few friends studying photography who offered to capture the wedding...the pictures turned out awful. Not that the shots were bad, but the film was ruined...so they didn't even turn out at all! They have maybe 5 pictures that actually came out taken by other family members...including the one I've posted.

The best part? They still adore each other.