Every year on August 19th I sit down at the computer and try to come up with something interesting to say about my wedding anniversary. This morning while trying to come up with something to write about I opened up the folder on my computer where all our wedding pictures are stored and realized that we have a total of 39 photos from that day. No negatives, just 39 4×6″ prints. Based on that number I’m guessing two 24-shot rolls of film were shot and a few of them were duplicates or didn’t turn out.

Of those 39 photos, more than half of them are the traditional staged post-ceremony pictures. There are pictures of me with other members of the wedding party, Susan with other members of the wedding party, and the two of us together with other members of the wedding party. Of the remaining pictures, two are of random people, two are of the wedding cakes, two or three are of the two of us eating cake, one is of the groomsmen with their tuxedos off and one is of Susan’s car covered in shoe polish and toilet paper out in the parking lot.

Susan and our niece Jessica

As far as I know there are no photos of the actual ceremony and no pictures of either reception (the one at the church and the one that night at the Round Up Club). My, how times have changed. Last month, Susan and I played photographer at our friend Jennifer Martin’s wedding. Between the two of us, in a span of a couple of hours we shot around 1,400 pictures and were able to deliver them to the family on DVD the following day. Of course we weren’t the only people shooting pictures at Jennifer’s wedding. A few other people were snapping photos with DSLR cameras, and everyone else was taking pictures with cell phones. I am sure Jennifer ended up with literally thousands of pictures from her wedding day.

Back to 1995. We do have a wedding video that Susan’s Uncle Ronnie shot for us. It captures a bit of the action before the wedding, the entire ceremony, some of the church reception, and ends as Susan and I drive off in her car. While the VHS video shot in 1995 looks a lot like a VHS video shot in 1995, we are very grateful to have it.

Every now and then a detail from that day will pop into my head. I had a few novelty t-shirts around that time and wore one — a white t-shirt with a picture of a can of Spam on the front — to the after hours reception. It had no significance in regards to the wedding itself; I just thought it was a funny shirt. The last time I was in Vegas I ate at a restaurant that had Spam on the menu and that shirt instantly popped in my mind. I have lots of memories from that day that I’m afraid of losing because I don’t have any record of them.

Here is a link to those 39 pictures, roughly two pictures for every year we’ve been married. That’s crazy.

Happy 19th Anniversary, Susan.

Link: 39 Wedding Pictures