Six years ago was the happiest day of my life. I was marrying Stephen Clay Long. He picked me. Wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. It was a dream come true.
Stephen planned almost every second of your wedding. If you knew him that fact wouldn’t surprise you. He liked to make sure everything was just perfect. He said he waited this long to get married, he wanted it to be right.
I looked at several different kinds of wedding dresses online. Kind of simple dresses. He was looking at them online and said no. He wanted me in a real wedding dress. We we looked online at a lot of them together. There were a couple of styles we both liked. I didn’t let him go dress shopping with me. Me and my mom and girls went. The dress I picked was the third dress I tried on. I knew the moment I saw me in it that Stephen would love it. I told him I wasn’t going to let him know which one I picked. The final pick on my dress was the only part of the wedding he didn’t have a say in. Shoot he even got my shoes. No joke. I came home from work one day and he was so thrilled to show me the shoes he got me to wear. They were beautiful. I proudly wore them.
We wanted everyone to have fun at the wedding. We tried to make things simple on our wedding party so they could just enjoy. The guys were told to just wear a black suit. The girls a little black dress. We told all of them they didn’t need to go out shopping and spend money. We just wanted them to have fun. We knew people would have to fly to our destination wedding so we didn’t want to have them pay for a lot more. At the end of the day my husband even helped pay for some people’s hotel rooms and other people’s flights. He wanted to make sure our wedding wasn’t a burden financially. Just everyone having fun celebrating our love.
And we did. It was sooooo much fun.
We played an instrumental version of “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” as I walked down to Stephen. When I got up there he had tears in his eyes and said “worth it” and “you look amazing”. The worth it comment was so funny. He had been worried that someone other than me doing my hair and makeup would result in me not looking like myself. My hairdresser flew out to Vegas and did them for me and some of my girls. And she did a beautiful job. And Stephen agreed. It worked. I wanted to knock Stephens socks off and I did. That’s what every bride wants on her wedding day.
When it was over we danced back down to James Brown “I Feel Good” at Stephens request. It was fun and funny. He even fist bumped someone. Then we had our reception followed by playing black jack at the HardRock. We got to sit at a table with our regular black jack dealer in his tux and my wedding dress. It was so much fun. I’ve been to tons of weddings. But ours was by far the best one I had ever been to. The most fun and happiest day of my life.
Dear Stephen,
Thank you for giving me such a wonderful day. Thank you for wanting to marry me and spend the rest of your life with me. I will never forget.
That day we said till death. And I meant it. Our life together wasn’t always perfect. But that’s ok. Because we made it. Sickness and health. Good and bad. Till death.
When I said till death I didn’t just mean till your death. I was saying I would love you till my death. And I will. My love your you hasn’t changed. It never will. In my heart you will always be my husband.
I hope that you see me trying to be strong for you and Logan. That you see me taking steps to move forward. That I try every day to honor you and the love we had. That even in moving forward I haven’t let go of our love story. I haven’t forgotten. I haven’t stopped loving you.
I will love you till the day I die. It is the vow I made and one I will keep.
Thank you for watching over me and Logan. For loving us. For being the husband and dad that you were. You may not be here in person, but you are always in our hearts.
Being a widow doesn’t mean I lost you as my husband. It just means my husband is now watching over us in heaven.
I love you
Ann
