Icing on the Cake

January 29, 2009

Dear Family and Friends,
It’s been a month and nine days since our wedding! So much has happened and changed (for the better!) in the past two months that it’s a bit mind-boggling!! I LOVE married life! It’s the BEST. Naturally, since I’ve got the best man on earth! But I’m getting ahead of myself – I need to start from the beginning. That would be about four days before our planned wedding day.

It was to be a lesson in flexibility! It all started with a huge dumping of snow in the middle of December covering NW Washington. We had 8 inches right here on our side of the island! Other places on the island got up to 12 inches, a friends place in Stanwood to 28 inches and Mt. Vernon got 18 inches. And because it was so COLD we also had ice to deal with. We did want a snowy, winter wedding but maybe we over did the positive thinking part!?

Then about 4 days before our wedding we heard about a BIG storm coming our way. And it was scheduled to arrive on Sunday, our wedding day! By Thursday, a flurry of phone calls started between our officiate, the guide, friends and the two of us, on what was the best option. We decided to move the wedding up a day, to Saturday, Dec. 20th. I thought I was doing pretty good with my packing and getting things ready but moving the wedding up put us in a crunch. By the time I finished all the things that needed to be done and had finished packing it was 1:30 AM Saturday morning. Talk about tired. I got a few hours sleep before heading for Mt. Baker around 6:30 am. Thankfully John had got an extra hour and half of sleep so he could handle the driving. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep for part of the way.

It was 7 degrees that morning right here at home! Amazing for Camano Island. We were right on schedule when we discovered that we had forgotten to BRING money with us! We were 15 minutes from home when we had to turn around to go back home for the money. But everything still worked out fine and we arrived just a few minutes after everyone arrived at the cabin that we were staying at in Glacier, WA. The roads were really good to us and Mom and Dad gave us a wonderful wedding present of four studded snow tires for our car. The new tires made us feel safe driving in all that snow and ice!

We threw our snow gear into our guide’s car and took off for the wintery Mt. Baker slopes. We arrived at the ski lodge around 9 am and got all our extra gear on. It was painfully cold – must have been around zero degrees. It was a BEAUTIFUL clear sunny day. We wore facemasks and that made John’s glasses fog up so for a while everything was fuzzy to him.

It was wonderful snowshoeing! The path started out well packed with a gradual incline then turned into fluffy powder. John & I tended to fall back because we were taking pictures and then we’d race to catch up. We all stopped for a snack about halfway up. Our guide, Ken, from the Bellingham Mountaineers, was 71 years old! I had no idea that he was in his seventies. He loves to snowshoe and was willing to volunteer to guide us up to Artist Point. He moved right along and we had to work to keep up with him. What an inspiration for all who thinks getting older means sitting in a rocking chair!

We took turns breaking trail and there were a few steep inclines to work our way up. Then, suddenly we were at Artist Point, with the most beautiful view stretched out before us. Mt. Baker was standing clear and bold, blanketed in a thick white mantle. Mt. Shuksan was gorgeous, its peaks dancing in the bright sunlight. We decided to have our ceremony right there, in-between those two lovely mountains.

There was just the four of us at our little ceremony – nobody else was around. We were going to have two friends come but one got sick and the other couldn’t get up there early enough. She came later that night, which was wonderful!

Ken, Barbara, John and I had a snowshoe dance as we packed down a circle for us to stand in. The poles got stacked in the center of the circle. John and I put on our tartan hats; Ken was in charge of pictures, while Barbara performed the ceremony.
The ceremony felt a bit unreal – Barbara got started then John interrupted her to explain the camera to Ken. I pronounced John’s last name wrong which I promptly corrected and we all had a good laugh over that. John and I read the poems that we had picked out for our friends to read, both lyrics to songs that had meaning, Come Away With Me by Norah Jones & Call of the Search by Katie Melua. The first poem we alternated lines and the second poem (after our rings) we read in unison.

We took our gloves off to use the tartan scarves to handfast, winding the scarves over and over to bind our hands together as we promised to “honor and respect, to share each other's pain and seek to ease it, to share the burdens of each so that our spirits may grow in this union, and to share each other's laughter, and look for the brightness in life and the positive in each other.”

As we stood handfasted we said our vows to each other – it was SO special! John had tears running down his face as he said his vows to me, such a sweet guy!

From this day on I choose you, my beloved
to be my life partner and my one true love
to live with you and laugh with you;
to stand by your side and sleep in your arms;
to be joy to your heart and food to your soul;
to bring out the best in you always;
and, for you, to be the most that I can.

To laugh with you in the good times;
to struggle with you in the bad;
to console you when you are downhearted;
to wipe your tears with my hands;
to comfort you with my body;
to mirror you with my soul;
to share with you all my riches and honors;
to play with you as much as I can;
until we grow old, and still loving
each other sweetly and gladly,
until our lives shall come to the end.

After that, it was time for the rings we got from Scotland, our hands fumbled in the cold as we got them out of the boxes. There was a blessing of the rings and then we exchanged them as we spoke more words of love and dedication. Then the pronouncement and the kiss to seal the deal!

We were so happy and had big silly grins on our face. We got a few more group pictures – poor Ken’s hands really got the worst of it with all the picture taking. Our hands were very relieved to get back in their gloves and poor Johnny’s ears had been left hanging in the cold because his hat didn’t cover them. It took a while for them to warm up but we were happy.

We headed back down right away, the ceremony took about 20 minutes so we needed to get moving. We wish we could have stayed to take in more of the beauty but at least we have pictures! A young couple with a dog had just come up as we were leaving and Ken told them we had just been married. They were amazed and congratulated us, the guy appreciated my “wedding dress” and “wedding veil”, reminded him of the Sherpa’s of Nepal. That was fun! We received various congratulations from people we passed on the way down.

We finished the day by having a small party at the cabin with my friend who came all the way up from Stanwood just to be at my wedding and missed it for all that effort! But it was wonderful having her. We had sparkling cider, three different cheeses, smoked salmon, crackers and of course cake! There were toasts, a lot more pictures taken, and signing of the wedding certificate. Everybody left about 40 minutes later. John and I were exhausted – we cleaned up the food and crashed.

I had a really hard time giving up “my planned” wedding day because I had my heart set on the 21st but it turned out to be the best! We were married on Winter’s Eve! It didn’t snow Sunday like we thought but it was cloudy and gray. We would have missed out on such gorgeous views if we had waited until Sunday to be married! So the change turned out perfect! Besides, we will get to have a two-day anniversary every year since we got married one day and we celebrated the next day!

On the 21st we went out to eat at the wonderful Italian restaurant Milano’s. Getting back up the ½ mile driveway to our cabin was real tricky. We were fishtailing and sliding all over the place, even with chains! Once we got safely up there we decided that we weren’t going back down until we were headed home.

We spent 5 wonderful, lazy, snow-filled days at the cabin. We snowshoed for all but one day, read books, completed a 1000 piece puzzle, watched a movie every evening and slept! There was no phones, TV, or Internet to disturb the quiet. It was a very special time and place for us – something we’ll never forget.

By the time we left for home, we had 30 inches of snow! The bulldozer that was to clear the road was frozen up, so we snowshoed a path for the tires. But the snow was so powdery and deep that it kept raising the front end of the car. We must have dug out at least 7 times. But it was a fun ending to a wonderful week.

So that is week one of our married life….but that is certainly not the end! Wait until you hear what happened next!


Sunny Smiles,

Jenna Delzell