Let it go... but keep the beauty.

Yesterday a very nice older gentleman came over and measured our playroom for carpet. {So excited!} He ended up being here for over an hour talking my ear off! I was actually already told that he was a talker, and boy was he! Over all he was very nice, but there was one comment he made that hit me hard. It was made when he glanced at our wedding picture above the cabinet. See I was pregnant when I got married. So he saw it and commented on the fact. He was just one of those guys that says what ever he's thinking and it wasn't meant in a mean way, but it hurt all the same. Because I know that others have wondered the same... if Ryder and I got married simply because I was pregnant. And it bothers me. I feel like I need to explain my wedding picture every time some one notices it. I feel like I need to tell people that we met when I was 15. That we were together, and dedicated to each other for years and years and years before we got married. That it was me not him that had hang ups about getting married. That he proposed to me before I was pregnant and we had already picked a date... so we stuck with it even after I got pregnant before the wedding. That there was no shot gun involved.
I hate that I feel this need to justify and explain my wedding day. It was one of the most beautiful days of my life, held second only to the first time I held each of my children in my arms and gazed into their little faces. {So I guess technically it's 5th?}

I've had people assume that we had a little wedding at the river because I was pregnant. Like I was hiding out or something. We had a little wedding because it was perfect for us. That's it. We got married at the same place Ryder proposed to me, and we had the people who were the absolute closest to us at the time at our wedding and that's all we felt we needed. Not that we didn't love everyone else, we just didn't want everything diluted with all the pomp and fuss that goes into a big wedding. It was already planned that way and had nothing to do with being pregnant.

I look at these picture and I remember how I felt and how everything seemed perfect. Flooded with love. Marrying the love of my life, and being pregnant with my first born, I was overflowing with good feelings. I hate that I do often wish I wasn't pregnant in my wedding photos now, that I feel embarrassed about it. Because of the comments and looks. It takes away from those really good feelings, and I hate that. I really do.
It sometimes makes me want to cry. I shouldn't want to cry when I look at my wedding photos. I shouldn't let what other people think bother me so much. But I do, that's just me.

How can I though, looking at these pictures? You can see the love, the excitement. I know the truth, the reasons. I need to let the rest go.

I need to embrace these photos and see them for what they are... photos of a very happy, very pregnant women marrying the only man she has ever loved. Living a dream.
Yes we were together for 11 years before we got married and we are still together 7 years after getting married and we love each other just as much. If not more. And that if you ask me is beautiful.

I need to let it go. Maybe I'll just put a different wedding picture up, one of just our happy shining faces so that I no longer have to deal with comments from people who don't understand. But then I feel like I'm trying to hide the fact that I was pregnant and I don't make apologies for that. I don't regret that, not one tiny little bit.

Feeling my son kicking around in my tummy and being with loved one, everything felt so very complete and perfect and whole.

If I'm being perfectly honest the only thing I truly regret is that I looked as big as a house in my wedding dress... but that's just vanity talking. :)