Why we were out so late before the wedding ...

The night before our wedding, I came in close to midnight.

My daughter was like, "Why were you out so late?"

Well, I'll tell you!

The wedding rehearsal was around six, and when everyone in the wedding party left we hung around to practice our trumpets in the church.

Not only were we playing two hymns and descants with the organist, but we also played a duet arrangement of Great is thy Faithfulness by Thomas O. Chrisholm and William M. Runyan and arranged by Eddie Lewis.

Hold my bouquet

We were really happy with Eddie Lewis's arrangement of Great is Thy Faithfulness, because we wanted to play something at our wedding (because we met because of the trumpet) but it needed to be religious and we also wanted the chance to show off our playing, but also it was a wedding and we didn't want it to be TOO HARD because it is (for me at least) kind of an emotional high-stress situation where it would be harder to prepare and warm up properly. I'll say that the piece was just challenging enough to be fun, but not so hard that I would turn into Bridezilla - trumpet edition.

The night before the wedding we were having our last minute rehearsal and there were a couple of things that we did that made it go smoothly:

We were trading off playing the top and the bottom so we highlighted the spots where we were switching. We spent time tuning our intervals and getting used to the way we sounded in the room. And we gave ourselves a couple spots where we would pause and start again. We pretty much made a plan for what to do if anything went wrong.

Even though the wedding was fun and joyous, it is a "high pressure" performing situation

Normally if you play in front of people you want to make sure everything goes perfectly and you have a chance to warm up and meditate and all that.

But this was a wedding and we were running around like crazy the morning of getting everything ready.

Seth was up really early making sure that the beans and all the fixings were ready for Frito pies.

I was trying to beautify myself and get my two daughters ready.

People were coming up to me asking a bunch of questions and taking pictures and saying congratulations before the wedding started.

The flower girl, my daughter, got upset because she was expecting a basket of flowers to throw but we couldn't find it and so she was crying and wasn't willing to walk down the aisle at first. It all worked out because my son walked her and it was cute and perfect, but it got me a little stressed out.

And seeing my friends and family out there smiling and just pulling out our trumpets and starting to play. I had my fair share of adrenaline going through.

I was happy that we stayed up so late working out what to do if anything went wrong. Because at one point things got sloppy for a second and then we came to our scheduled pause and we were able to finish the piece and everyone loved it. Anyway, playing our trumpets at the wedding was amazing. And I loved all the music that my friends played. It was incredible,