Mr. and Mrs. Steven Paul Hake
I remember writing it out on paper to see how it looked. Saying it out loud to hear how it sounded. Relishing with all of my heart the reality of belonging to someone.
It seems at once both so long ago and only yesterday.
Steve and I celebrated 25 years together by taking a romantic mini second honeymoon and then back home on the farm we had several local friends join us in celebrating with a small and simple ceremony in which we renewed and updated our wedding vows to one another and also made vows to our children.
While we made plans and prepared we had some wonderful conversations with the children sharing about our lives before they all were born. I pulled out the box that holds my wedding gown, complete with the punch stain down the front from when we did the fancy, linked arms toast at our reception. They wanted me to try on the veil and we talked about how marriage is a picture of Christ and His beloved Bride, the church, and the significance behind the veil and how Christ died to remove the veil that is between Him and His Bride. I pulled out Steve's boutonniere that I saved from our wedding and he wore it again, 25 years later.
Some friends came early to take some portraits for us. Our neighbors had an old wooden arbor they were throwing out and Ethan brought it home and he and Jordy did some repairs on it and Emily decorated it. She wove some cream and peach roses, our wedding colors, together with some ivy to make a garland in our wedding colors and wound some cream tulle and tiny fairy lights to give the final touch to the beautiful arbor.
And we got an updated family portrait.
We had a table set up with our original wedding picture with our invitation as well as our marriage certificate and our blown glass cake topper. We also set out the photo album of our wedding pictures. Everyone enjoyed comparing then and now and making all the remarks about how young we looked in the pictures.
After everyone arrived Steve shared a little about why we wanted to renew our wedding vows.
When we first were married we wrote our own vows to each other. We had such a shallow view of marriage back then. Mostly we thought of it as a sort of contract that we made to one another in the presence of God and man. We were sure that our relationship was rare and special and yet we hoped that we would be one of the lucky couples who's marriage would not end in divorce.
We have since come to believe that our marriage is more than this tick-on-a-tick relationship we started out with. We now believe that the true purpose of our marriage is for God's glory and not for our own selfish gain. We now believe that our marriage is a lifelong covenant between not just Steve and I, but God, too. We wanted to write new vows to one another to include our new commitments that reflect our new beliefs.
Also, we wanted to renew our vows for our children's sakes. Over the years we have watched with sorrow the grief and pain and devastation that has come when friends of ours have had their marriages and families break apart. Our children have expressed fear to us at various times that this might happen to us someday. We wanted to make vows to them that we would daily seek God's grace to live out our vows to one another and to them until death do us part.
Jacob officiated our little ceremony starting off by reading the selection of Scripture we had chosen for our wedding, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.
Then Steve and I made our vows to one another.
And to the children.
And then Jacob helped us to do something special with all of the children.
Steve's mother gave us as a gift the part of an old aspen tree that used to be down "Honeymoon Lane" up in the Rocky Mountains where we took our first honeymoon. We usually keep this stump on our fireplace mantle but for today we placed the stump with some potted flowers around the base of an old tree in our yard that needs to come down. We hung votive candle holders right into the old tree and hung a shelf to hold our unity candle so that we could have a special lighting ceremony with the children.
Steve's mother gave us as a gift the part of an old aspen tree that used to be down "Honeymoon Lane" up in the Rocky Mountains where we took our first honeymoon. We usually keep this stump on our fireplace mantle but for today we placed the stump with some potted flowers around the base of an old tree in our yard that needs to come down. We hung votive candle holders right into the old tree and hung a shelf to hold our unity candle so that we could have a special lighting ceremony with the children.
We have lit our unity candle at every anniversary but this time we did something unique. To symbolize each one of our children being a gift of God to us and coming from our union we bought a votive candle for each of them. We bought the lovely wrought iron holders for them so that we can hang them in our dining room and they will always have this before them as a visual reminder of the vows that we have made to one another and to them. We even found a wall decal with our wedding Scripture that we will put on the wall above the piano between the votive holders.
We had intended to sing a duet at our wedding but when the time came we could not locate the tape with the track on it. We have since joked that God spared us from that when we heard the song at the end of the movie with Littlefoot the dinosaur, "The Land Before Time". The children all thought it was hilarious that we were going to sing that at our wedding. We have always thought the lyrics of that song were touching so we had "If We Hold On Together" playing while we lit the candles and then we all joined together and sang the ending of the song together.
Jordy gave the toast and we all chinked glasses together and enjoyed our pink lemonade.
Steve and I cut the cake... again.
A dear friend brought ice cream cones for the children and everyone enjoyed some visiting while Jordy played some music, starting with playing "our song", "Moonlight Serenade" then going on to other favorites of ours and special songs to us.
Emily and Ethan surprised Steve and I by playing Pachelbel's Canon with some of the younger ones singing along vocally.
I begged them to sing again the song they had taught themselves in four-part harmony to surprise me for Mother's Day. They hadn't sang it together for months, but they did a wonderful job.
I just love hearing my children sing together!
Here is the link to the video of the children singing "Crown Him with Many Crowns" together...Hakelings singing together
Then we all just enjoyed playing music and visiting together until the sun went down.
Then we all just enjoyed playing music and visiting together until the sun went down.
The chandelier that Steve refitted with solar lights began glowing.
The fairy lights on the arbor were glowing and our unity candle was glowing and our hearts were glowing, too. It was such a lovely celebration.
Here's to the next 25 years!
If you'd like to see more pictures, just for fun Molly and I made a slideshow of the evening set to Pachelbel's Canon. There were so many pictures it was hard to choose. Many of them were blurry yet they captured the precious moments of the day frozen in that one glimpse of time. You can view that here: Anniversary Slideshow
