February & March of 2012 will go down in the books as one of the most extraordinarily happiest times of my life!! It was during this time my then husband to be and I were at the END of our pre-marital sessions and testings and we had a definite wedding date ahead-we were only weeks away!!!

NOW as you must know, we pre-wives need space and time to plan some things out to make sure things will be the what our heart is set on, what we dreamed our wedding day would be like. Even in my case, who had no such dream-EVER! I had some ideas of what could happen. And when news got out we were engaged the year prior, people started asking questions while others made suggestions. So between the two groups a light went on in my head and told me I needed to start getting some VISION as to what I wanted my "dream" wedding to look like!

Barns! Barns are nice, I'm kinda from the country, I could do barns. So I thought, when I started envisioning the decor, hay was the first thing that came to my mind (otherwise it was an authentic BARN WEDDING) and immediately, just with the thought, I started sneezing...I'm allergic & so would've a bunch of others from whomever was going to be invited.  I had other thoughts like renting out some ideal venues such as the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney or the old barn house in H. B. But what we wound up getting GIFTED was ZACK'S TOO in H.B. from Zack himself! It was more than a dream come true, it was to be a wedding gift as well as Zack was doing the catering!

Remember back up in there somewhere I mentioned briefly about "invitations"? OMG, wedding planning got real serious the year prior to 2012 and I had no idea!! But by February all of those issues had been resolved and a wedding was about to take place, it was down to x'ing off the final days on the calendar! One of the last purchases I made before the wedding was a pair of cute little white sandals for my HAWAIIAN WEDDING! 

I searched long for the proper shoes for my stubby feet that were going to be showing under my long dress. And I found the most PERFECT pair online by Hurley footwear. I didn't even get a chance to take a pic of them because; ready for this? They were never seen after they were taken off my feet AT my wedding!!!!! 

DUHN duhn duhn DUUUHNN!!!!!!!

After saying our vows, during the wedding, and the long-awaited first kiss as husband & wife, my new husband had ONE MORE gesture of love (other than the rings) he wanted to convey; he rubbed my feet with oil! What a man!!!! 

BUT he took off my sandals & replaced them with socks & boots which he so thoughtfully had taken care to bring to our wedding!! My husband has not been this mindful about ANYTHING since!! Where did that guy go??!! In those moments of displaying the love of husband to his bride, when he took off the sandals he laid them aside leaving whomever was in cohoots with him and this shoe trade to pick up the shoes towels and box or so you would think-right?!!!

Well our wedding day, as with others, was a whirlwind of excitement with a lot of change of plans thrown in. I won't go into a lot of detail here but our deal with the caterer was turning out to be more than we originally bargained for to the point where we were seriously looking into other venues days before. The biggest threat was the weather and whether people would come to an outside beach wedding. So on the day of our wedding when the rain started I had so many family & friends around, I had very little time to be sad about the pouring rain and our inability to change our venue or our not having food for our guest. But I was DETERMINED to wear my sleeveless wedding dress, covering for my arms and my sandals!! I mean DETERMINED!! 

It seems the rain was teasing me that cold blistery day but like I said, had it not been for all the wonderful family & friends surrounding both of us that day, I would've broken from feeling like I planned badly. But I didn't and our wedding day was a SPECTACLE I could've not dreamed!! God surely had a MORE beautiful day planned for His daughter!!

....back to the missing sandals; 

In the midst of my husband rubbing oil on my feet, pictures being taken and the pastor reading the poignant scripture from the bible, my sandals were taken and placed in a gift box (one of the few wedding presents I received and didn't know it) and never seen after that ceremony. You see it was windy and rainy. We were at the beach and we had decided to take our wedding guest to our favorite spot-DENNY'S for an impromptu reception-the BEST KIND!!  So in the scurry to get out of the rain off the beach, in a moment of total wedded bliss-I forgot about my sandals!! And they were never seen again!!!

Now today, two years into our marriage, when I sit and look at the photo of us on that day, I still wonder what happened to my beautiful white wedding sandals?!! Everyone I've spoken to about them, that could've possibly been involved with recovering them that day stated they had not or did not handle them at that time. Which makes the mystery more deeper! Who did?!!

I wish I knew. 

You see, it's not about what was spent on them, or the process it took to find them or even that they were mine, but they were part of my wedding ensemble that is forever incomplete without them.... BUT, if I have to chalk that up to anything, I can only say that it was as my wedding day was; something unplanned but TOTALLY ok.... they were just shoes I wore only ONE TIME!