Unique as a Snowflake

On Saturday (7/6), I officiated Nanette and Paul’s wedding ceremony at Ashton Gardens in Corinth, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

Nanette and Paul share such a beautiful love story. It is love that comes from a maturity not possessed by the young. It is a seasoned love. (Don’t call us old; we are not. We are seasoned!)

In speaking of the initial phase of their relationship, Nanette says, “I found him to be intelligent, articulate, and charming. We would laugh and talk very intimately about feelings and experiences…” 

And Paul says, “I… immediately felt a closeness that was hard for me to explain… We found that we shared so many core values in common… It seemed to me that I was speaking to someone I had known for a very long time… It was almost a de javu experience… With Nanette, I feel safe and comforted... She has an innocence, sophistication, and charm that delights me…”

Nanette observes, “I've learned some very important lessons with Paul. The most important is what love is and how to share it…“ Indeed, in such a seasoned love, we discover that “what love is” has a very different answer than it may in earlier years, when we might be more superficial about our love. 

Paul clarifies: “I observed to Nanette early in our relationship after we had spent the day running around doing errands that I just enjoyed doing the mundane with her… There is joy in the simple things that I love about our relationship…” That, indeed, is what seasoned love is all about.

Such a seasoned love helps us discover perspectives about ourselves we never saw. As Nanette says, “Paul has shown me a different definition for love. He has been patient and respectful. He is generous with his affection and kindness. He sees me in a way that I have never seen myself and loves me, even the broken parts.”   

It is this kind of love that deserves to be celebrated by cementing it through marriage. As Paul says, “I want to marry Nanette because I want us to continue to love, laugh, and enchant each other for the rest of our days… I want to publicly proclaim my love for her, to share our love story with our friends and family. I believe that all love is as unique as a snowflake, each beautiful in its way.”

Yea

On Saturday (7/13), I officiated Samantha and Cooper’s wedding ceremony at Hotel Za Za in Dallas, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

The genesis of Samantha and Cooper’s relationship was uneventful. Samantha says: “We met on my first day of training for a restaurant called Liberty Burger… Then he came to manage the Liberty Burger I was working at in Lakewood… We didn’t really pay a lot of attention to each other. I worked the morning shift and he worked the night shift so we only saw each shift, for a couple of minutes before I would leave. He eventually became curious about me when he saw me in a picture with one of his friends on Facebook. This inspired him to strike up a conversation to find out how I knew his friend. After that we talked more regularly at work, but even then, we didn’t really feel a draw to each other.”

Then adventure struck. Cooper says: “We discovered that I had a wedding to attend in Austin the same weekend she had her sister’s birthday party. So, in lieu of her usual pattern of taking the bus down she asked to ride with me. I thought why not, she does not have murder me energy. 

This was a definite turning point. Samantha says: “That’s when things started to change, very subtly, but noticeably… Cooper and I started hanging out regularly. As we hung out more and more we organically became more attracted to each other and got to know each other more. It wasn’t an earth-shattering can’t stay away from each other experience; it just softly happened. We never had a conversation about where we were going as a couple; we never really had to. It was just a feeling we kept following, and the progression felt natural.”

The adventure struck again. Samantha and Cooper had an experience few have when developing their relationship. Samantha went abroad to teach. They had one year of long distance. Then Cooper joined her for another two years of teaching in two different countries, no less. The organic sense of relationship building Samantha mentions coupled with a multi-year adventure cemented their relationship.

This is why on a more recent adventure to Silverthorn, Colorado, when Cooper dropped on one knee and asked Samantha to marry him, she responded with two words, only one of which I can mention, which was yea. 

This is why when asked why they want to get married now, Cooper says: “I don’t know, it feels right. I approach life logically most of the time and this time I just decided to let that view out the window. I feel this one. I don’t have a reason, and I think that is the reason. I don’t want to go around this world with anyone but her.”