So far I’ve gone through two parts of our anniversary photo shoot (you can catch part 1 here and part 2 here and the original post explaining why we were doing the shoot here). After we finished taking pictures on the nature trail, we headed off to the beach for the most anticipated part of the day, reciting our wedding vows.
For those of you who followed our wedding, you know that we wrote our own vows and recited them from handicalligraphed cards from our calligrapher. After the wedding, we put our vow cards in frames and displayed them on our nightstands. For the photo shoot, we took the vows out of their safe dry frames and headed out to the beach to relive our wedding ceremony all over again (hoping that the wind wouldn’t steal them away).
This turned out to be the most intimate moment of our day because our photographers set us out on our own and photographed from afar. Everything they captured was totally unscripted.
I started off letting Mr. A go first. We positioned ourselves like we did for our ceremony , holding hands, facing each other, and taking a deep breath. He proceeded to recite his entire vows from memory. It was so sweet and so touching. I had no idea that he had memorized them all.
When he finished, I smiled and told him how thoughtful it was that he knew everything by heart. Then, he reminded me that he’s watched our wedding video so many times that the words are seared into his brain.
Then it was my turn. I felt so bad I hadn’t memorized them. The running joke is that I took a while to read my vows on our wedding day because I opted for stylish, instead of functional vows. The calligraphy is white on a shimmery silver card, with the writing running diagonally. It’s almost impossible to read in the blaring sun but it looks pretty. Anyway, true to our wedding, I had difficulty again reading my vows and kind of skip an entire line…whoops.
When it was all over, we both were so swept up in the joy of the moment that Mr. A picked me up and twirled me around.
He’s still mad I wasn’t actually looking at him in these pictures but I was more concerned with not flashing everyone 
Once we finished our twirl, our photographers had us pose.
And then again with some cute seashells.
I’m really glad that we decided to recite our vows again during our photo shoot. It helped us relive the joy, excitement, and love of our wedding day all over again. Even though it had been over a year, my memories from that day are still so vivid that I get transported back to that point every time we talk about the wedding.
Absorbing and rereading our vows also helped to reinvigorate our commitment and promises to each other. These handwritten vows are still probably one of my favorite details from our wedding. They will continue to live on and on, serving as a testament to our deep love.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the final installment of our anniversary pictures, featuring some sunset beach pictures and a little after dark action.
