Michigan Wedding
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Our Wedding Vows
Sean and I wrote our wedding vows one summer’s evening over a bottle of berry wine, as the sun sank behind the oak trees and mother birds tucked their children into stick and found-yarn nests. We had just finished a meal that required three trips to deliver to our wooden outdoor table. The children next door were playing on the swing set, their voices wildly leaping over blades of grass into our backyard. We tried holding on to the evening as long as we could, feeling it slip between our fingers like moisture over the pale green plants of our yard. We had a month until our wedding and we…
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Michigan Wedding Ceremony
We got married on the Summer Solstice, although the sun did not hear about our celebration until I was walking down the aisle. When I look back on our wedding at Douglas Valley Winery, love and nostalgia skip across my arms and down my back, holding hands and spiraling out of control. I had been dreaming of my wedding ever since I met Sean, and yes, years before that, too. As a young girl, I would flip through wedding magazines and dream. But I’ve never been after a “wedding” with Sean; I’ve always just wanted a “marriage”. Looking back I realize this difference is probably why planning our wedding was never an…
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We Got Married
We got married. And it was pretty perfect! Like the kind of perfect that makes you want to go back to middle school, call your friend late at night and jump on your bed screaming about the boy who kissed you. It was the kind of perfect that finds you in your daydreams and makes it smile. It was the kind of perfect that leaves you thankful for your parents and friend’s support– because surely you owe a drink or four the people behind the scenes that day. It was the kind of perfect you can’t wait to frame pictures of. The kind of perfect you can’t wait to write…
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Destination Wedding Preperation
I saw a cardinal when I was packing our car this morning. It was sitting on the garage, eyeing my white mug. “It’s just coffee,” I told him, as I looked at our car, spitting wedding decorations out the back door. This vessel was not intended for carrying such large loads, of that I am sure. I look back to see the cardinal, but it has flown away. I smile, although I wish it had stayed longer. As a child, I used to believe cardinals had a superstitious power to change the energy of my day. My parents would call me from my bedroom where I was playing, telling me to “hurry,…
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We Applied for a Marriage License
We had to drive downtown to get our marriage license. We were hoping we could get it in Wyoming, but the woman at the City Hall told us we had to drive to Grand Rapids and talk to someone at the County Clerk’s office. Neither of us wanted to go to into the city, but we went anyway. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, an unfortunate reality of life. We parked in a parking garage and walked up three flights of stairs to reach the outdoors again. We walked past a tall brick building and Sean mentioned how his dad used to work in the…