Oldest Daughter is Getting Married in 6 weeks!!!

[Marilyn]

Just wanted to let you all know one reason I've not been on here much lately. A little over a week ago we learned that our oldest daughter is getting married December 22nd. Her fiance is in the Navy. He's corpsman assigned as a medic with the Marines at Twentynine Palms, California. They've known each other for 2 or 3 years and have been maintaining a long distance relationship for almost a year. She's going to college in San Antonio. He's scheduled to be deployed to Afganistan in April but may go as early as February. They were going to wait until after his first deployment, but have decided not to wait. He has 2 weeks leave beginning Dec. 18th, and they did not want to wait unil the Saturday after Christmas, so are getting married at 6:30 p.m. on the 22nd.

Dec. 22nd is our 36th wedding anniversary, so we won't have any probem remembering theirs. They are getting married in a historic old church building. Supposedly, Stephen F. Austin worshiped there. It's now used as a chapel.

We found her a dress on Saturday. It is absolutely beautiful. It's a soft light ivory with clear jewel accents. The fabric looks antique, and so appropriate for a evening wedding so close to Christmas. We're having about 160 guests, so are very busy booking florist, caterer, planning decorations. There is literally so very much to do and so little time. She ordered the invitations today and they should be here the end of the week or early next.

We don't have time to stress over decisions, so they are being made very quickly. The groom's family is handling the music for the ceremony. His dad is worship leader and in charge of the music at their church. The groom and his dad are both musicians. The music for the wedding will all be recorded, but I'm sure it will be awesome. It will be soft rock, and the wedding march will be some 5 guitar arrangement. This will be very different of us. The music in our church is all accapella. Many of the young people are marrying in chapels or other locations so they can have instruments. There is no problem with intruments at a wedding since it is not a worship service, but most of our church buildings do not allow instrumental music so as not to cause confusion with people's perception of the church and the position on instruments.

After the wedding, our daughter will be moving to Calif and transferring to a college there. I'm a bit concerned about her being way out there alone while he is deployed. She says that she will be home over the summer, and she will have a brother-in-law two hours away in San Diego, should something happen to her husband while he is in Afganistan. This is a real concern for us that he will be injured or worse and we can't get to her, even by plane, for several hours. I'm sure though that the miliary must have a good support network for spouses of deployed soldiers.

Please keep us in your prayers through all of this. She's marrying a fine young man, and they love each other, so we feel pretty good about them. We just pray that all will be well with them through his deployment.

I'll try to check in and see how all of you are doing from time to time.