How to celebrate a wedding anniversary
Notes from 30 years’ experience
Last Tuesday, July 1, Kraig and I celebrated our thirtieth anniversary. Of course “celebrated” is a bit misleading as we spent the day sorting things at his folks’ home and packing a trailer with his brother so our two families could get back to Texas and Oklahoma with everything we were taking. We did have a bit of a celebration on Monday the 30th—we took our kids to downtown Detroit where we haven’t been for years and gave them a taste of the riverfront, the buildings, and, in particular, PizzaPapalis, a Chicago-style pizza chain found in Detroit and only a few other towns around there. The girls agreed that Detroit, even at its finest (from Kraig and my perspective), made a pretty good setting for a dystopian novel. On the other hand, Jon loved it—the buildings, the cars, the metalwork…. It was a lovely afternoon.
But Tuesday was more of our normal kind of wedding celebration. We seem to have made an art of not celebrating the way many couples I know celebrate. Big trip? Weekend away? Ha! That’s for typical people. We go the extra mile to be strange. Here are a few examples of our unique celebrations:
2000—5th anniversary—Can’t remember anything except we were probably prepping for my sister’s September wedding.
2005—10th anniversary—Daughter Clare’s birth imminent, so we weren’t going anywhere!
2010—15th anniversary—New roof needed, and I selected our new shingle color.
2015—20th anniversary—We were in Mexico that year, but had to come home during the summer due to our visa status. Some people go to exotic international locations for their anniversary. We left the exotic and came to Canton, Michigan.
2020—25th anniversary—Need I say more? This was the year my parents celebrated their 50th, and my sister and brother-in-law celebrated their 20th. My parents had prepped and planned for a number of years so our whole family could go on a cruise to the Baltic. We did get to go on a Caribbean cruise with the family in 2022, but the Baltic is still a dream.
2025—30th anniversary—Here were are! Just practicing our normal.
I suppose one could look at this list as a tragedy, but I hope you don’t. It’s become a story for us, and a humorous one. More than that, it’s a reflection of life together—thirty years together! I can’t help but wonder what monumental events we’ll pull off for future big dates. Maybe we’ll be like my parents who spent their 55th anniversary on June 27 driving from Pennsylvania to Michigan so they could join all of us for the memorial service.
One of my jobs during our two weeks in Michigan was to sort through family photos, and it wasn’t an accident that on Tuesday I found snapshots from our wedding. There were so many photos of the family; we were a good bit younger and prettier, but we’re still here, and there are many more of us now, too. And those of us who have gone on, like Mom and Dad Warnemuende, are there smiling with all of us, a beautiful memory, and a hope for the future.
Nope, I can’t complain. Kraig and I took each other for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, thirty years ago. We’ve seen those vows played out in our own marriage, and we know we aren’t done with them yet. We’ve seen those vows played out in both our parents’ marriages, an unusual picture these days that we take less for granted the older we get. We’ve seen those vows fractured and broken in our extended family, making us value them all the more. Our kids are watching us—they see us at our best and our worst—and hopefully, we pray, we’re giving them a tiny glimpse of what being united in Christ means. We’re definitely still on the learning curve ourselves. Here’s to another 30 years to keep learning!
Art for the week:
Monday a week ago my short story, “The Gift of the Capuchin Thief,” released on The Habit Portfolio Substack. Those of you who have read my Daughter of Arden trilogy will recognize one of the characters in this story. I had a lot of fun writing it!
In other news:
I was pretty excited when my sister let me know the other week that my trilogy had a lovely review in WORLD magazine—talk about a confidence booster! You can read the review here.
Next week I’m flying back to Michigan (can’t keep away this summer!) to join my sister Carrie and another Bandersnatch Books author, Matt Mellema, to help man the Bandersnatch Books booth at the Realm Makers Expo in Grand Rapids, Michigan. If you’re in the area and you love to find new speculative fiction authors, not to mention games, media, art, etc., come on by! You can find tickets here.
Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.
You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.
Happy Anniversary! 30 years is a double blessing in this culture. I think of anniversaries now (only 12 years in) as sort of mile markers on a marathon (the end of which we are unsure). The mile markers are there to encourage you: "look how far you've come!" but also "keep running." haha maybe that's not the most encouraging view.
Seriously though we usually spend time reflecting which you've done here beautifully. One year we were in the middle of an evangelistic week at our church. we left for lunch at a steak house and then just got back to sharing the gospel afterwards.
God bless you!
Congratulations, on both your anniversary and the World review! Happy travels!