Our 18th anniversary flowed happily like the previous 17. We remembered anniversaries past, snuggled up to our pride in our wedding vows, and acknowledged our dedication to love each other fully every single day.
As an homage to those younger people we once were, here are the vows we wrote 16 years ago. These are the promises that we made each other in the presence of friends and family, wedding us more strongly than a fee paid to a clerk ever could.
We hereby declare the promises we have made one another. We invite you all to witness and take part in this celebration of our love.
We promise to work at loving each other.
We promise to take care of each other when we need it, to leave each other alone when we need it, and to ask when we do not know which is needed.
We promise to communicate our needs to the best of our abilities.
We promise to remember that we are individuals.
We promise to weigh each other’s wishes before making decisions concerning each other.
We promise to try to know each other to the fullest extent possible in each phase of growth and change.
We promise to keep these promises fresh and relevant and to keep our love young and new.
And here we are on that day in 1998, at Doe Bay on Orcas Island in the San Juans. This is a phone pic of a laminated printout of a scanned film photograph. Quality is low, but I’m glad to have it anyway.







I remember; we suddenly realized the night before the ceremony that we hadn’t actually written anything down!
…So we went to bed early that night thinking we could get it all hammered out at least before we got in front of all of our friends and family the next day…
We wrote those promises to each other that night in about 25 minutes flat! We knew precisely what it was we wanted to promise each other, we still do.
I love those people at the bottom of the blog just as much as I do that couple at the top.
Thank you Dena, you are wonderful!
I still have the invitation you guys sent for your ‘ceremony’.
I tried to include them it here but couldn’t so I’ll email a copy to you in case you no longer have it.
If any two people were “supposed to be together” it’s you two.
dean
Look at all those eyes full of love. Your joy is glinting off the lens.
Many happy returns.
Happy belated anniversary wishes! kids!