30 Years

Today my parents are celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary.

As a little girl I always loved looking at their wedding photos – mom with her long gown and flowers in her hair and dad with his dashing three piece suit. Thirty years later, they were there with me on my own wedding day looking just as beautiful and handsome as ever.

They got married at Brigadoon, a family estate on Lake Joseph in Muskoka, Ontario. It was a weekend wedding, with guests coming in from all over. The place was packed with people staying in the main house and two boathouses. On the morning of the wedding, my dad went water skiing while my mom was running around doing the final errands. I’ve only seen the property from the water when we’ve driven by it on the boat, but from the stories I’ve heard it was really beautiful…and quite the party!

My mom did the flowers (just like she did mine), they had a roast beef dinner out on the lawn and the cake was made by my grandmother. The little cake topper is from my Great Aunt Marian’s wedding, and she let us use it for our wedding cake too.

Like every wedding, they had some hiccups too – like my mother cutting her ring finger open the night before and not wanting to get stitches because her wedding band wouldn’t fit then. Or my Nana falling two days before the wedding, breaking a wrist and ankle and not being able to do anything. It was also the first weekend that my uncle brought my future aunt to meet the whole family – and my dad convinced her to hem his suit pants the night before the wedding. Talk about an introduction to the family.

Their getaway car was the candy apple red ’34 Ford Coupe that my dad built. When I was growing up, he’d take us out for car rides all the time. If you’re going to roll up to a Dairy Queen for ice cream cones, you want to do it in style.

These two are the reason that I believe in marriage and family, and I owe so much to the love they’ve shared with us and the example they’ve always shown me. Both Garrett and I are really thankful to come from families where our parents stayed together, and I know that not everyone gets that privilege.

Garrett and I couldn’t have pulled together our own wedding without all their help. They put up with months of talking about all the decisions, endless phone calls, and all the craziness of that weekend – right down to pouring honey into jars and designing all the flowers into the wee hours of the morning.

Congrats Mom and Dad – and thank you for all you’ve done for me not just this year, but every year.