The Wedding

Sarah: The last couple weeks I have spent in the U.S. of A. My older sister, Emily, was married to Greg Ford this past weekend in Chattanooga, TN. I flew up about a week and a half early to be of help with last-minute details, and also for some good quality sister time and bonding time with my new brother-in-law. Emily and I had a great time together, with many long days of running errands and finalizing everything before the big day. She was my maid-of-honor, and I was her matron-of-honor. We realized it had been a good number of years since the two of us had spent some quality time together, and we took advantage of our time together with lots of talking and catching up! It was also great for me to spend time with Greg, since I had only met him once over Thanksgiving last year. To get everything done, Emily and I would get up in the mornings and figure out a plan of attack for the day, put our game faces on, and go strong until meeting up with Greg for dinner. It was a lot of fun to be there during the hustle and bustle of wedding frenzy.

The rest of my family drove in the Tuesday night before the wedding and we all helped out with projects like assembling the programs and tying ribbons on the bubbles. Wednesday night we had a Gosselink Family Night, complete with Italian sausage sandwiches, games, ice cream, and walking around downtown. Though that also marked the beginning of even more busyness, it was great to have my family around. David also flew late Wednesday night, and I was really glad to see him too!

Thursday night we had a Girls’ Night Out with Emily – dinner downtown, walking around and hanging out, and spending the night in a hotel room. It was good for her to catch up with some of her friends who were coming from out of town, and good for us all to meet each other, since we all play a special role in Emily’s life but don’t all know each other well. David went out to eat with the guys that night and got to meet the groomsmen and the other usher (David was an usher as well). Since Greg is from the south, most of his friends and family have a thick southern accent. David said at one point during the dinner he realized that he could have understood a conversation completely in Spanish better than the conversation going on with such thick southern accents!

Friday Emily had a brunch for all girls who had a role in her wedding, and then we headed over to the church to begin decorating. This took us all the way up to the rehearsal/rehearsal dinner, and then all of a sudden it was the night before the big day! Greg’s 13-year old son, Hunter, was his best man, so Hunter and I got together Friday night to write our toasts together. Neither one of us was too keen on the idea of public speaking, but it was good to sit and work on them together.

And finally, Saturday came and went. Everything seemed to fly by! Emily was calm, but very excited. I stayed the night with her on Friday night and she came into my bedroom Saturday morning jumping on the bed chanting “I’m getting married today!” It was bound to be a good day. Emily said later that everything was perfect – just the way she wanted it to be. That’s a good thing to hear from the bride, after she’s spent months planning and dreaming up the perfect day! The wedding was beautiful and Emily was a radiant bride. The forecasted rain even held off, and Emily and Greg were able to drive off in their new convertible!

After a fairly short clean-up time, David and I went out to eat with my family and hung out with them the rest of the evening. They left early the next morning, but David and I didn’t fly out until Monday evening. We ended up getting together with the other usher, Ken, and his wife Renee on Sunday evening. It was great to be able to hang out with them and form a new friendship with a really neat couple. And finally, after a very long night of travel (due to fog, we landed in Panama and sat on the plane for an hour and a half before getting cleared to go back to Costa Rica), we arrived back in the country early Tuesday morning.