As you all know by now…Luke and I got married last year. 

We had gotten engaged in July, and our first step in wedding planning was to contact our pastor at First Free Church.  We had been attending there for a while, and had heard great things about his pre-marital counseling.  We had our first meeting, and after a long day of discussing — decided that we would live apart while we completed the counseling, and we would get married in October!  It was very important to us to take our counseling sessions seriously and prepare ourselves for marriage. 

Within about a week, I had moved out of our apartment, into a small studio a few blocks away.  We got to work on planning our ceremony, spent time together writing our vows, choosing just the right verse for a Bible reading, and got materials to have a sand ceremony.  During those weeks, we worked through counseling sessions on communicating, financial planning, and worked to better understand one another.

October 17, 2015, we invited a handful of people, and had a small ceremony on the beach near our apartment… at sunrise. Although it was a FREEZING morning, we couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful sunrise to start our life together.   And later that night we took our guests on a dinner cruise from Navy Pier.  The wait staff were amazing in helping us celebrate, with a champagne toast, and they even announced us onto the dance floor for our first dance! The day was truly unforgettable.

             And we are so happy to have the chance to renew our vows, with all our family and friends, just in time for our one year anniversary.