Tuesday, April 27, 2010

bxlx, me - celebrating 9 years married, 14 together


bxlx, me, originally uploaded by sproutgirl74 / jenifer lake.

today we are 9. on a friday in april of 2001 we had decided a courthouse date was in order. we didn't tell anyone, we didn't call the parents. we secretly worked on blessing invitations for later in june with the thought that we would drop them in the mail later that day announcing our little rendezvous with the courthouse.

we thought we needed a witness so we had flown in our dear friend jb from colorado to be that for us. alas, we didn't need one, but we were happy to have him with us anyways, especially since we didn't let on what we were doing that morning... 'hey john, ya wanna go for a bike ride with us?' he very dutifully snapped some photos for us while we ate at the donut dinette to celebrate the morning ride. then we were off biking along the water over to the courthouse. the mister rode me on his handlebars & i was in my daisy flip flops & vintage dress & he was in his flops & shorts. it was a beautiful spring day!

we had this super duper old man -- mr. tonnelson - marry us. he'd been marrying navy couples FORever in norfolk, virginia. he carried his little typewriter with him into the room, laboriously typed our names on a little yellow sticky & stuck it over where "do you, *jenifer* (insert yellow sticky here) take..." & then we exchanged plastic crown shaped candy colored rings from the 25 cent bubble gum machine with each other. john, wanting to be the perfect wedding host, bought us our 'wedding cake' -- a honeybun from the vending machine down the hallway :)

afterwards we biked back around norfolk, shot some photos at some iconic places (in front of huge navy ships & statues) & had a pizza & drink at a local greek pizza joint, orapax, where the waitresses are never very nice to you & they blast crazy greek music out into the hood. we three ended up back at our apartment all napping in one bed together. nice honeymoon right? i got to sleep with two men ;)

we popped the invites for our blessing backyard party for later in june in the mail thinking everyone would find out on monday, but, the ultra efficient norfolk post delivered a lot of them on saturday. i had taken a line from a.a. milne's book, now we are six, and typed 'now that we are five'...with a little request for people to come celebrate with us on the invites. needless to say, we received lots of messages on our machine inquiring as to whether we had just gotten hitched or not.

thus, we had to go find the parentals the next morning & tell all so they didn't find out from someone else.

that summer was crazy: blessing ceremonies, broken ankles, quit jobs, graduate school, move across the country to SF... all stories for another day :)

happy anniversary mister, hope we get 9x9 more :)
xxx.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jen&Bob,
Congratulations on the beautiful day. The story was so wonderful to read (a few little droplets escaped from my eyes)...
In all these years I had never heard the story of your wedding. It is just the perfect epitome of you two-- I couldn't have imagined it any other way.
Love you guys! Can't wait for NYC
xo Sarah

Nicole Mitchell said...

YAY! You guys are so flippin cute! xoxo

Katrina said...

oh, hooray! such a sweet story. congratulations on being 9 + 5, you are almost to married double digits. to love! xoxo,k.

bonneyboys said...

it was such fun to read this, especially as I recently came across the Ring of Fire comp cd you guys gave out after your celebration party. I don't think I knew all those details either and it was fun to imagine you at Orapax (Mom and I used to go there for dates back in the day) and riding your bikes dressed just so. I can't believe that much time has gone by!
So congratulations you two and you'd better come through here this summer and Europe all of us 2011.

jenifer lake said...

thanks everyone :) xxxooo

adowe said...

This story made me cry a little. I love your wedding. It's perfect.

Much joy to you and the mister. Congrats, and many more.

Ali