On August 29, 2009, we celebrated our 30 years of marriage by renewing our vows and a dance. (Note: our 30th wedding anniversary vacation occurred the end of last year when we went to the Philippines. See David’s blog summary of our Philippines trip for details of this and pictures).
For those of you who could not attend, we have posted the following here:
- Below is a short 4-minutes slide show (on YouTube) with pictures of the ceremony (alternatively, you can view pictures from the ceremony in our Flickr album).
- Also below is the 8-minute slide show shown at the ceremony highlighting our 30 years of marriage (again, on YouTube).
- Our wedding vows and our “Note to our guest”, that was part of the program.
- “Our story” is a separate page.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOkcdGg7evc]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJsWiB0kpqk]
Dave’s Vows
My dear Cathy, I love you.
I thank our God that He has given you to me as a helper, someone to share my life with. I believe you are God’s very best for me. It humbles me to know of the great responsibility I am taking this day, but I trust that God will surely make me adequate to do what I believe so strongly is His will.
Because I am confident that this is His will, I can wholeheartedly vow that I will do my best to lead you, to love you, to provide for you, to protect you and to be faithful to you. I further vow to continually seek God’s will for our lives and to do all I can to fulfill you.
Cathy’s vows
David, I love you.
God has called me to you to love you and cherish you all the days of my life. I pray that I will be worthy of this privilege. I desire to be used of Him to fashion you into the best man He desires. Our Father wants His best for you and He sent me to help you strive for His best and not settle for anything less.
I vow before our Lord that I will do the best I can to obey you, to love you, to serve you and honor you as the head of our home. I know it will not always be easy but I know that God has hand picked and chosen me for you. So, I believe that He will grant me all that I need to be your helpmeet.
To our guests
Thanks for taking the time to share this day with us. We have been blessed with great friendships and support of family and others around us over the years.
While many of our day would call 30 years together as quite an “achievement”, we see this as a time to give thanks to God for the blessed years He has given us. We believe it is more His achievement than ours as He fashioned us, brought us together, given us life and marriage sustaining values in His Word, has guided us and given us strength for each day to live out the commitment we made on our wedding day.
As we did 30 years ago, we can rejoice on this day because we know that God has called us to commit our lives to one another, but this would have never taken place if we first didn’t commit our lives to Jesus Christ. We made this commitment to Him on the basis of four facts.
- God loves us very much and wants the most meaningful life for us.
- We can’t experience this on our own because we have sinned and become the god of our own life.
- Jesus Christ died to pay the penalty for our sin.
- We can accept Christ’s payment for our sins by trusting our lives to Him and asking Him to be Lord of our lives.
We believe this is not only the basis for the best marriage, but for the best life. Won’t you commit your life to the One who loved you enough to die for you?
“Lord Jesus, I need you. I invite you to come into my heart and forgive my sins. Take control of my life. Make me the kind of person you want me to be.”
Please tell us when you make this commitment, so we can rejoice with you.
David and Cathy