august and everything after: 5 years

five years ago, on august 21st, i married my love.

this year, we celebrated our anniversary in style with family and friends! i wholeheartedly believe that it takes more than just two people to make a marriage work - so it makes sense to celebrate the success of a relationship with the people who have helped it to succeed. so, we've decided that we will do just that . . . at every 5 year mark, we will invite our friends and family to join us in celebrating our love and in a way we will be able to say "thank you" to what they have given to our adventure.

here is the night in photos:

the awesome decorations and amazing food:
my sister, cousins and dear friend caroline all came early to help decorate. the party was a potluck style, funky-formal themed party . . . and i couldn't have been happier with the outcome (except for if it hadn't have been so hot! we were so sweaty!)

sister, deborah and i in our party dresses:
we had a "how well do you know jon and tabitha game" . . . the winner won this lovely bull fighting statue purchased by jon from "savers" (like value village for you west coast kids). guess who won? our roommate lisa. no fair. she lives with us. of course she knows us the best!
we showed a video of our wedding that a friend edited and overnighted to us so it would arrive on time. afterward, jon and i toasted to each other:

the whole crew from 175 ives: now only 3 of the originals remain in that house . . . it's lonely.
our friends really rallied to the dress-code. it was AWESOME!
good food and beautiful people:

some people even brought us a CAKE!

after cutting the cake and stuffing it in each other's faces (we didn't do this at the actual wedding, so it was fun to have a second chance), we had a "first dance" followed by lots of dancing to playlists made for us by our friends:

brian and emily (our cousins) came down on the train and stayed for a few nights! soooo fun!

teegan was wiped out from all the dancing:

it was sooooo good to have my sister deborah there! she flew over from alaska for a week before heading to oklahoma for her senior year in college:

i love him

he loves me

the end