Hi friends! This month, March 11th to be exact, Kyle and I celebrated our two year wedding anniversary! Between that and all of Maria’s wedding planning, I’ve been feeling pretty nostalgic and emotional about love lately. So today I wanted to share something a little different with you all, I wanted to share our wedding ceremony vows!
One of my favorite parts about our wedding day was something that actually wasn’t visually appealing at all. Something that not one single guest at our wedding even saw. It pales in comparison to the elegant table setting, exquisite floral arrangements and drool-worthy spread that was our dessert table. It was not photographed in those beautifully styled detail shots. And it definitely wasn’t Instagrammed or Snapchatted by our guests!
In fact, it was typed up using a basic font, cut haphazardly into squares, and then pasted in two small cloth covered notebooks I had gotten at Michaels the week of. But just because you couldn’t physically SEE this cherished part of our special day, and even though our guests may not even remember them, the words spoken during our ceremony will forever be ingrained into my mind and etched onto my heart as my favorite part about our day.
Many don’t know that we chose every single word that was spoken at our wedding. We hand-picked every reading, prayer and blessing. We wrote our profession of love to each other and our vows.
They were perfect. And they were uniquely ours.
And although words can’t really be photographed, and the pages of our vow books definitely weren’t “Instagram worthy”- the verbal exchange of our love for one another, our promise to always walk together and the deep passion we both felt while reading from our little homemade vow books, will always outshine all the other details when I reminisce about our wedding day. Because while it may not have been the prettiest part of our day, two years later as we celebrated our wedding anniversary, the eloquent words exchanged that day still give me goosebumps, still make me cry, and still choke me up when I read them today.
Nowadays, we endlessly scroll through beautifully curated photographs until we decide one is worthy of our “like”, we swipe right on people only if we deem them attractive and we fill countless inspiration boards, with mostly unobtainable things, on Pinterest. We live in a time where seemingly only visually appealing things matter. So today I wanted to share our most favorite words with all of you!
“Since the day we first met, we have been inseparable.
Never has anything felt so new yet so comfortable at the same time.
Our love has always felt incredible and inevitable, as if we were always meant to be.
God gave me the greatest blessing when he led me to you.
I knew I loved you then. I know I love you now. And I want to be with you until we’re grey and old.
Today as we stand before family and friends, I vow to love you and honor you, inspire you and support you- until my lungs give out.
I give you this ring, and with it I give you my heart.
I promise from this day forward, you shall not walk alone. May my heart be your shelter, and my arms be your home.”
These words may not be worthy of a photograph or even a book- but they are our words. And they so perfectly articulated our past, our present and our future together. I still mean every word I spoke, and I am still overcome with emotion when I read them today.
I hope this inspires you all to remember the intangible things that cannot be photographed, double-tapped, or swiped right on! Oh and happy anniversary Kyle! 🙂 xoxo
*All Photography by Samantha James Photography*
