Renewal of Nuptuals (in Santa Fe)

Well, if you've read any of my earlier posts, it's not a mystery that I love Santa Fe and the Southwest. That's why it was a no-brainer the day I decided it would be wonderful to renew my husband and my wedding vows in Santa Fe on our 10-year anniversary; especially since Santa Fe was also where we spent part of our honeymoon. Our entire immediate family made the trek to Santa Fe, some for the first time, to share this event with us.

It started off like a fairytale...Wait, no it didn't...I'm describing someone else's vow renewals! It actually started off close to a nightmare. The minute we landed the plane in New Mexico, we were off to the dentist and urgent care center to treat my husband's abscessed tooth, which decided to hit him full-force as we left that morning for our trip. The plane flight just exacerbated the situation and within 2 hours of our arrival to my home-away-from-home, my husband was getting a penicillin shot in his backside. I thought that somehow we'd made the wrong decision to try to do this so far from home - that maybe there was some reason why the ceremony wasn't meant to be!

I worried the entire first evening that we'd be rushing him to the hospital in the morning. In fact, we did when we saw that his face had swollen to twice its size by morning. Luckily, the staff there, who was extremely nice, said that it may take a couple days for the penicillin to totally work its magic and for his face to look/feel better. They were right, luckily. And thank God that we had arrived there three days before the actual ceremony.

It wasn't until our ceremony was over and we were sitting in the most beautiful private dining room at Bishop's Lodge that we really relaxed and felt the pure joy of the moment. A moment shared with family, and only paling in comparison to our wedding itself. This sounds corny, but it truly felt enchanted, and I believe that everyone else felt it too. I'm hoping that if the Santa Fe virgins (so to speak) in my family did not "get" from their visit what it is I love so much about that land, that maybe they got a glimpse of it during and after the ceremony at Bishop's Lodge, which seemed like a magical point in time even as I'm remembering it now.

Even with a rough start and my husband's face, still looking slightly like Popeye's during our ceremony, I couldn't have asked for more. I guess that's easy for me to say since I wasn't the one with an abscessed tooth, but these are truly memories that I will always cherish and am so glad that we made a point of making them! It's hard to believe that as I write this, it has already been a little over a year since that day (11 years since our wedding), and my husband and I have shared yet another anniversary together. To quote Ferris Bueller's Day Off (yes, I grew up in the 80's), "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

The best part is that my son got to share this with us!