Our family was blessed to attend another beautiful fall wedding this year on October 8th.  This young couple is part of our church and it was such a privilege to watch them go through the process of friendship to courtship to engagement and then to begin their life as a married couple.  You see, these 2 have been going to church together since they were about 11 years old but they never really talked much.  The groom had an innocent crush on the bride since the age of 12 but because of his upbringing it just wasn’t something he acted upon at such a young age.  Instead, he grew up and focused on education and building his career; working towards getting to the point of being able to support a wife.  During this time he began to pray for the young lady that God was preparing for him and as time went on he was still aware of his crush on this sweet young lady in his church.  Rather then jump in and ask her on a date he felt it wiser to talk to her dad about building a friendship with Rachel and see if their 2 personalities were even compatible for a life long relationship.  After a couple of months talking on the phone and visiting at church they decided that yes, indeed, they liked each other and desired to see if their relationship was the Lord’s will.  They prayed together, they asked their families to pray for them and entered into a courtship.

I realize to you romantics out there this all seems rather unromantic but really as I was able to watch it all unfold it was quite enduring how it all worked out.  It wasn’t long after they started courting and spending more time together that the young man knew he wanted to spend his life with Rachel but he didn’t want to rush her into marriage.  So they courted for about 7 months before he asked for her hand in marriage and they were married about 5 weeks later.

It’s so refreshing to watch a young couple go about building a relationship in a honorable, pure and Godly way and not get hung up on things the ‘world’ calls important to a relationship.  Their wedding took place in the groom’s large family backyard filled with beautiful trees with stunning fall colors and changing leaves.  The weather was absolutely perfect and the couple were surrounded by friends and families who loved them, prayed for them and celebrated with them.  When it was time to announce to the groom that he may kiss is bride (and yes this was for the 1st time) he took off his cowboy hat (all the guys in the wedding party wore cowboy hats) and with charm and grace, held up his hat so that he and Rachel could have their first kiss behind the hat.  It was classy and made all of the guests say AWWWW!

Once again, I was blessed to be able to make the wedding cake.  It was a 4 tiered cake with 2 of the tiers being chocolate and 2 being vanilla with a raspberry filling my mom made (thank you mom!) and covered in vanilla bean buttercream.  The cake topper was absolutely adorable with a girl on a horse leaning down to kiss her groom.  So creative!  Just like the topper from the wedding in September with the pine cones!

As a side note… this wedding and the one a couple of weeks earlier are just proof of how creative you can be with a wedding and that you don’t need to spend $10,000 to have a beautiful, meaningful wedding.  Kudos to these 2 sets of bride and grooms for making their special day special without breaking the bank!

I’m thankful that my kids are able to see that there is another way to go about dating and marriage then the way the world presents!

Enjoy a couple pictures!