How Hubby and I Met...

Barb wrote a post yesterday asking, "How Did You Meet Your Honey?" I decided to participate and accomplish at least 3 things simultaneously:

1) Share our story.
2) It gives me something to blog about.
3) Humiliate myself while giving everyone else a good laugh.

Here goes:

Lamar and I met on December 29, 1984 at a small country music dance in my home town of Trumann, Arkansas. My Mama and I had been going to the dances for several years and the dance we met at was one of 3 in town at the time. There was no alcohol allowed and it was good clean fun. Time for one of those laughs I mentioned. The women usually outnumbered the men so sometimes women danced together or there would have been a LOT of wallflowers. Laugh if you want to, but it was some of the best times I've ever had in my life, I met friends that I'm still friends with today, and it's good excercise. I lost 50 pounds while I was going to the dances.

I was 21 and so was Lamar. I noticed his smile first, but he noticed something else about me. Let's just say he noticed my chest before he noticed my face and the rest of me and let's leave it at that, shall we? Of course he didn't get around to sharing that with me for several months. Guys, you know? I danced several dances that night with him, and we met again on New Year's Eve for the dance. Most of my dances were with him, and when we weren't dancing we were talking, getting acquainted. By the next week's dance, we were a couple, and the week after that he worked up the nerve to kiss me goodbye after the dance...Just a peck, in full view of my Mama, but for Lamar, that was crazy bold! When we had been together a month, just seeing each other at the dance every week, Lamar asked me to "go" with him and gave me his senior class ring to wear. He wore my ring, too. After that, he started coming to my house occasionally during the week and on Sundays he sometimes spent the day and went to church with me. In that picture to the left we had known each other a month. This was taken at the dance and he asked me to go with him right after this picture was taken.We were both considerably, a-HEM, slimmer when this picture was taken in January 1985.

This picture was taken in April 1985 at a friend's house. Too bad I'm not still that small....*Sigh*.... By this time we were spending a lot of time together, with friends and at my house and his. I still lived at home with Mama, Daddy and my sister Cecil, and he still lived at home with his Mom. Not much time unsupervised, even though we were both over 21. And I'm not complaining about the lack of time alone, either. It probably helped keep us out of trouble. During our early courtship, we wrote letters back and forth to each other during the week, because we only saw each other on the weekends at the dance. I still have all of the ones he wrote me. Lamar threw away the ones I wrote him long ago. Guys, you know?

All during the summer, it got harder and harder for us to say goodbye to one another when it was time for us to part. We just almost couldn't stand to be apart. Finally in August, Lamar asked me to marry him. Neither of us wanted a long engagement, so we set our wedding for October 25, 1985. I turned 22 on October 23, and we got married on October 25th. My church and his both gave us wedding showers, and the pic at left was taken at Lamar's church. That's his Granny between us. Can you tell how happy we were? Ecstatic might even apply to that time in our lives.

We compromised for our wedding so as not to offend too many of our family and friends. The wedding was at my church, but one of his former pastors performed the ceremony. My sister Ducky made my wedding dress, veil and garter and a church friend made my cake. We served mixed nuts, mints, punch and wedding cake. We didn't send out any invitations, it was strictly by word of mouth. We planned for 100 people and over 200 showed up. The only cake and punch I had was the little bite Lamar and I fed each other. Even the top layer that is traditionally saved had to be served. I had already told my servers to serve it anyway. Who wants to eat year-old cake from the freezer? Not me, anyway. That's my Mama, Daddy, me, Lamar and his Mom in one of our wedding photos.
The next pic was taken just before Christmas 1985. We'd been married 2 ½ months here. Did I mention we were happy? Lest I leave you with the impression that it's all been roses for us, let me assure you we had plenty of thorns, too. We've had our ups and downs and were even separated for 3 months in the summer of 1992. There've been times when Lamar was in the wrong and times when it was me that was wrong. Even so, we've been blessed to have been able to work things out through the years. On October 25, 2006 we'll celebrate 21 years together and we've raised a beautiful daughter together.

This last picture was taken back in May of this year at an awards assembly at Jessica's high school. Now that she's in college and out on her own, it's just us two here together most of the time. I miss Jessica a lot, but I'm enjoying my empty nest, too. These days, 21 years of marriage is something to be proud of. Both of us have to give and take, compromise sometimes, admit we're wrong, and carry more than our fair share of the load to keep this marriage thing afloat.

Okay, Barb, I hope this answers all your questions, but if not, feel free to ask away in my comments or email me.