Seventy-Two hours. This is all the single time we have left. Our lives will be forever changed and joined. I will gladly be upgrading my relationship title of “fiancé” for husband. It took me these four and a half months to begin referring to myself as Rachel’s fiancé instead of boyfriend. Now I have a new title to get adjusted to.
Seventy-two hours is also the same amount of time it takes to read the entire bible out loud. The next time you have 3 days to kill, give this a try. Although it might be more manageable to try an hour a day for 72 days. 🙂
Seventy-two hours is also the amount of time we need to be prepared to survive without basic utility services in case of a natural disaster: http://72hours.org/. I think Rachel and I are prepared for marriage, which will definitely NOT be a natural disaster. Our premarital training was very helpful and informative. (Thanks, David and Jamie!) We have been working on our marriage more than our wedding since February — at least until this last week or two when things got really busy finalizing everything.
Now is the time to enjoy being
Yes, there are still some details to finalize even this late in the game, but with wise counsel, we are going to try our best to begin enjoying the marriage ceremony and reception with our family and close friends. Some things we wanted to do got the axe this week — not because we didn’t want to have them or that they wouldn’t be nice, but because as Pastor David Ake says, “A wedding doesn’t make a marriage. Invest in your marriage.” With all the frenetic last minute activity this week, we could paraphrase this counsel another way, “Don’t forget the reason for the season.”
Gratefully thankful and humbled
As we enter the final hours before the ceremony, we just want to say a big thanks to some of the amazing people who are helping us with the wedding (yes, there are lots more). We are humbled and very grateful for the love you are showing us right now:
- Susan Howard & Nate Brown- reception setup
- Diane Sun – our wedding coordinator
- Denise Pacific – Rachel’s matron of honor
- Chris Whitson – Bill’s best man
- Wayne and Pamela Walters – Bill’s new “mom and dad” 🙂
- Ron and Ingrid Murphy- Rachel’s new “mom and dad” 🙂
- Amber Emery – our cake confectioner
- Yolanda Harris-White – our photographer
- Josh Carl – our Videographer and Reception DJ
- Rachel Gatewood – our guestbook table attendant
- Josh Tollison – a former student of ours who is leading us in worship before and during the ceremony
- David Ake – our best friend and pastor, who is pulling double a triple duty this week helping get things ready
THANK YOU: we love you all so much!
Ok. I’m finishing this blog post so I can go enjoy myself this week, because my parents are driving in and my brother, Wallace, is flying into town tomorrow and I’m excited to see them all!
Rehearsal is at 5:30pm on Friday. At that point, we will have 21 hours left. How fun and amazing it is to think how far the Lord has taken us and how He will sustain us through the rest of our days.