Home!! (and The Arrival)

After a wonderful honeymoon at the beach, a LONG drive from Delaware and a loud trip to pick up Lilly at Kristi & Angie's, we are finally home and settling in as newlyweds!! It feels great.

I'm still processing a lot of what happened so I think I'm going to try to blog a little bit each day with different stories and pictures. Warning - they probably won't be in any kind of order :) ... Today I'll start with how we arrived at that church for the wedding.

For the past 15+ years, my mom has been the pastor of the First Congregational Church of Kent in Kent, CT. Kent is classic small town CT - population 3,000, locally owned businesses, spotty cell phone service, constantly active gossip lines and a large volunteer fire department. A lot of the people in my church are members of the fire department - EMTs, fire fighters, auxiliary, etc. - and my family has tried to be as active in supporting them as possible.

A couple of months ago, I said something to John Worthington, a friend of our family, fire department members, deacon at the church and father of two beautiful girls I used to babysit for (who are now grown up!!), about how much fun it would be for me and my girls to show up at the church in a fire truck.

And John made it happen.

John brought the truck to my parents house around 2:15 (the wedding started at 3) so we could take pictures before we left.

We were CRAMMED in!!  From left to right - me, Steph, Kari, Kristin & John.  Gabriella was on mine & Steph's lap, Jess & Barbara were buckled in to the seats behind the cab and Bethany sat on Barbara's lap.

We didn't care.  We were having a GREAT time!!

My parent's live about two miles from the church.  John drove really slowly and we waved to everyone we drove past.  As we came over this hill, I gasped.  I had never seen so many cars parked in and around the church.  I was so touched that so many had come from near and far to share with Bruce and me.  It was an incredible feeling.

I think at this point we were cheering a little bit.

There's a SLIGHT CHANCE that at this point the siren may have gone off.  Now - the siren is not supposed to go off unless it's an emergency, so if anyone heard the siren we had nothing to do with it.  Though - some would say it was an emergency.  I had to get to the church on time!!

When we pulled up to the church I couldn't help but smile.  People were waiting for us to show up and were in awe of how we made our grand entrance.  Needless to say - ten (or so) minutes of pictures and the ceremony didn't start on time.  This is me and my beautiful flower girl, my cousin Gabriella Miko, at the church waiting to be helped out of the truck.

The bridal party (including ring bearer Andrew Fields) with the fire truck outside of the church.

Talk about an arrival!!

Thank you to John Worthington and the Kent Volunteer Fire Department for making this happen!!

Stay tuned for more!!

Lots of love,

Sarah :)