5 Years...wow!

Kevin and I have been together nine years and celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary yesterday. Our wedding day was a great day. We still talk about it and look at our pictures with great fondness. We decided to have a 'secret destination' wedding. We had all our guests meet at the church across the street from where we lived at the time. When the guests arrived, Kevin and Jude welcomed everyone where a white school bus was waiting. They were asked to hop aboard and join the mystery ride. Meanwhile, Phoenix and I had slept over at the Elora Inn, where the wedding was going to take place. We had all morning to get ready. It was a small, intimate wedding. I wasn't the type of woman who had fantasized about her wedding day as a little girl, about the long, white dress (I even surprised myself when I went for the traditional look), about all the details some girls seem to hold onto. For me, the actual day was never as important as the life we would build afterwards. We picked a location where we loved it as is; it didn't need a lot of extra decorations to make it feel special. It was a restored old mill with lots of stone and wood—elegantly rustic. The day was overcast with drizzly rain at some points, but if you ask me, even now, what the day was like, I would tell you it was a gorgeous, sunny day. That just shows you how much our frame of mind plays a part in our perception.

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Although we got married in Elora, Ontario, Canada, Kevin's parents and our dearest friends from England, my sister and brother-in-law who were living in Saudi Arabia, my sister and brother-in-law from Edmonton, Alberta, friends from Ottawa and Florida travelled all those miles to celebrate with us. Not to mention our good friends who lived close by. And to make it even more fun, our minister was a Robin Williams look-alike and just about as funny. Even during the ceremony, we had a good time!

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Even back then, we had grand plans to go on an adventure. We went to France for our honeymoon to scope out the country as a possible relocation point. We loved France, but we realized there were too many obstacles to make it happen at that time. Perhaps, it's because we had to find our way to Costa Rica first? Who knows, but whatever has led us here, the journey has been an exciting one so far. And we continue to be open to where it leads us in the future. We're still laughing. And we find joy in supporting and watching us grow as a couple as well as individuals.