Three daughters and their three weddings in three months.

That's just what Hall County couple Martha and Sammy Martin went through earlier this year, as they sent Monique, Meegan and Meah off to wedded bliss.

"We got a lot of raised eyebrows," said the mom, speaking of the bridal schedule.

"You know, shop, shop - I learned a lot. We all did," she said. "... But all three of our daughters knew, from day one, what they wanted (in their wedding)."

Things could have been far worse, though, as far as wedding planning goes.

Only Monique Simental, the youngest at 22, had the big church wedding at Grace Baptist Church in South Hall and the reception that followed at Elachee Nature Science Center on May 17.

Meah Norwood, 26, opted for a smaller affair on April 23 near Port St. Lucie, Fla., where she lives, and Meegan Edmondson, 31, had no witnesses as she and her husband tied the knot in a small Gatlinburg, Tenn., chapel on Feb. 29, or leap day.

Still, the Martins kept busy.

"The three weeks apart (between the second and third weddings) and traveling like we did, that was a little bit hectic," Martha said.

When asked how the weddings came about at the same time, she said, "I'm not really sure. They all just started becoming engaged, like the weddings - one, two, three."
She said that she and her husband planned Simental's wedding "a solid year."

They went to Florida in October to help with Norwood's wedding.

Edmondson, who has been married before and has an 8-year-old son, and her fiance "wanted to be a little more discreet" with their wedding.

"He had asked her for a year to marry him and she just kept waiting," Martin said.

Reflecting on it all, she said with a hearty laugh, "I don't know if there was some competition. I wondered at times."

But it wasn't all smiles and giggles during the planning stages.

Norwood was the first to get engaged, the sisters agree. Simental got engaged later, then Edmondson followed suit.
"I think it was the summer of '07 that Monique told me ... ‘we're getting married on this date,'" Norwood said. "We had already picked our date - we just didn't announce it, because I didn't feel like I needed to announce it until we knew what we were going to do.

"Mine and Monique's wedding was the drama. It was the fight (over) ‘Well, I got engaged first.' Because I didn't announce my date; that was the conflict."

Norwood is the regional manager for a company that manages waste and recycling at mall properties in Florida.

Simental acknowledged the sore point.

"There was a lot of debate over who picked their date first," she said.

Laughing, she added, "I say I picked my date first."
Conflict aside, Simental said she believed all went well with the weddings and she thought it was especially appropriate that the sisters got married in order of their ages, oldest to youngest.

She said "everything was perfect" on her wedding day.

"My best thing was that we all got to be together, which was really special," said Simental, who works as a laboratory technician at Northeast Georgia Medical Center.

All three sisters were together only for Simental's wedding.

Edmondson, warranty administrator for Jacky Jones Lincoln Mercury, said her wedding was "kind of quaint. We just wanted to get away."

She said her first wedding was bigger, with about 50 people attending.

"I'm just not one of the ones who dreamed for a big wedding," Edmondson said.

She stayed on the sidelines when it came to the strain between Simental and Norwood.

"I (didn't) get involved in a lot," she said. "I hear stuff from my Mom more."

And Edmondson saw - or rather, heard about - the stress.
"That was the thing. Every time I called my parents, there was some huge thing about this one's wedding or that one's wedding.

"Me being older and I've been married before, I just really wanted to go away. I'm not into the whole showy thing."

It wasn't all pure wedding angst and causing "wrinkles," as Martha Martin put it. She has fond memories of the whole experience.

Martin recalled taking a big piece of wedding cake to her hotel room after Norwood's wedding.

"The morning before we left, I opened the fridge and there's this huge piece of cake," she said.

"So, I'm sitting there gobbling up cake before we leave. I'm like ... I've got to have my last bite."