I feel like I was just walking down the aisle to the man of my dreams yesterday…and then I blinked and now here we are and it’s already been 3 years! Someone tell me how to make time slow down! I love living life with this guy and am so thankful to have such a caring, hard-working, loving, patient husband who knows me inside out…including all of my many flaws…and still thinks I’m the biggest blessing in his life.

Ryan, just last week you wrote me a note thanking me for inspiring you daily…I don’t know what I did to deserve your unending support in everything that I do or that amazing way you tell me to give myself more grace even when the dirty dishes have been sitting in the sink for three days and my work has spilled from my office down to the living room where it’s taken over the coffee table..I love how just one big bear hug from you and those three words I think we say more than any other words “I love you” can make anything better. I love that I still miss you even when you just leave the room, and I just want to spend all my time with you. I’d give you my whole life…all the seconds I have left on this earth if I could…that sounds so cheesy (which is another thing I love about you…you never make fun of me for the cheesy things I say!), but I’m really most joy-filled when we just get to get away from it all together and do nothing but relax, explore a new place, dream about the future together, and soak up the now…and when Lexie is there too it makes it even more fun!

There’s a saying that goes something like: “Isn’t it funny how nothing seems to change, but then you look back and realize everything is different?”. It’s fun to look back and see how much we’ve grown together…how much life we’ve lived together since the days of seeing each other in between classes in high school and eating lunch together in the gym…and even how much life we’ve lived since our wedding three years ago. I love looking at our pictures because it reminds me that the wedding was just the very beginning…that the true joy in getting married is found in the moments and months and years after the wedding…in building a life together and in the anniversaries that follow. On June 18th, 2011 I didn’t think my heart could get any fuller…but it’s overflowing..and Ryan, I just love you more and more with each passing day!

These pictures are not all of the prettiest ones from our wedding day…if you want to see the prettiest ones you can go to our post on Katelyn’s blog (which if I’m being honest, I still go back and look at from time to time just for fun!)…but these are the ones that really mean a lot to me…there are some things that I might change about our wedding if I could do it again…I might pick a different dress or different colors or invest more in flowers, or have a live band over a DJ…but the heart of the day was absolutely perfect and I have so many amazing memories of it! The people, the setting, the brunch foods, the cute little white chapel, the locket my dad gave me, the hair stylist who still cuts my hair to this day, my mom and mother in law ironing my dress just before the ceremony because we forgot the steamer, the look on Ryan’s face when we did our first look and then again when I walked down the aisle, my grandparents dancing at our reception, driving away in our little yellow getaway car…I could go on and on! But I’ll just let you look at the pictures…going through my own pictures and being able to appreciate the little moments reminds me just how important my job is from a different perspective!

Here’s to many more anniversaries, Ryan!

All photos by Katelyn James. Thank you so much, Katelyn, for capturing our wedding day for us!