Pre-Wedding and Wedding (story)

Well...it's been quite a while since we've updated this. Missy and I are now married and a lot has happened since we last posted. I'll give you a quick run-down of some of the high lights. Unfortunately we lack pictures.

We had an excellent photographer (Sam Price) but since we are on the road and he is on his way to Indonesia we don't have access to our pictures yet. They should be at our apartment in North Carolina so we will post them as soon as we arrive there.

June 14th- I (Kars) graduated from SCC (Spokane Community College) with an AAS degree in Aviation Maintenance.
- Andre (Kars' younger brother) arrived in Spokane

June 15th- Kars' parents and Lennart (his youngest brother) arrived in Spokane.
June 16th- Missy's parents arrived in Spokane.

The next few days our families recuperated from their jet lag and got to know each other. We showed them our church, the community college, Moody Aviation and Missy's daycare. It was great to be able to show these places which have been such a big part of our lives. I think it helped our parents to be able to picture these places better too.

June 21st- We all drove to Montana to visit Missy's grandparents. It was about a 4.5 hour trip to get out there. We were able to spend some time with Papa and Bana and also had a great time conversing in both cars. We drove home that same night. It was a long day, but it was well worth it.

That weekend we started getting ready to get busy. The moms helped us figure out food and we made several trips to Costco. Both families ate dinner together several times over those few days and had a good time getting to know each other.

June 26th&27th- Several friends came into Spokane and things got pretty busy between airport runs and grocery shopping.

June 28th- Missy's brother and sister-in-law and sister and brother-in-law came into Spokane and we were able to have a family dinner with just Missy's immediate family.

June 29th- We spent all morning at the church preparing the finger foods and decorating. In my (kars') opinion this was one of the least stressful days because all the activity went on in one place (the Church). Before hand we probably had to go over 10 places each day to do errands.
Missy's parents headed up the preparation for the reception-food. They put in a full-days worth of work.
My mom made the food for the rehearsal and we all enjoyed good old Indonesian fried rice and Chicken satay (sate). My parents also did a skit which included paying a brides-price to Missy's parents. This was an interesting ordeal because the payment types for the two countries were vastly different.


June 30th- The wedding day!! Thanks to my groomsmen who tackled me in the middle of the night, I got less sleep than I wanted :) We arrived at the church at 11:00 so we could have the pictures taken. The temperature was great. It was probably in the High 70's. We could take pictures in the park without breaking into a sweat.
The wedding itself was great...Jack and Sophie, our ring bearer and flower girl did a great job coming down the isle. Missy looked beautiful coming down the isle. After a few words of the pastor we had a worship time. I really enjoyed the worship time 'cause we got to sit down and focus on who this wedding was really about. Dan did an excellent job keeping the ceremony centered on God which is what we had asked him to do. The Ceremony was over before we knew it and we were amazed by the awesome slideshow Missy's brother had put together.
It was cool how we knew each of the people coming through the reception line. The few families I hadn't met, i had heard much about. It is a great thing to know that you are getting married in the presence of close friends and relatives. Both our Dad's spoke at the reception and gave us advice. We escaped from the wedding in our car which had been beautified by my groomsmen. We searched for the nearest car wash and had to go through twice and scrub the car in between before our car was incognito again.

We spent 5 days on the west coast of Washington. We stayed in Lynden (a smal dutch town) and went to a resort on the ocean near the Canadian Border. We probably enjoyed Lynden the most.

The following Thursday we arrived back in Spokane where we spent the afternoon re-packing our stuff at the house of John and Diana. We opened our gifts and were overwhelmed by people's generosity. Our small group from church surprised us by coming over with an ice cream cake. We finished packing and left the following morning heading East. We made it South Dakota the fist night. It was a long 900 mile 13hr drive but it got us a long way towards our goal. From there we went to Butte, NE where we spent the night with a family friend. Since then we've passed through O'neill Nebraska and are currently in Lincoln Nebraska with Missy's grandfather.

Next Stop: DENVER, COLORADO :)