Ryan's Wedding Gift

You thought you were done with wedding talk, didn't you? Well...I had a few things I didn't get to blog about and I want to, both so I can tell you...and so I can include them on our love story page! So for the next few days...we're reverting to wedding-land.

I wrote a while ago about the perfect start to our wedding day, but I didn't write about the gift I gave Ryan. I wasn't sure he wanted me to share about it...because it was a pretty personal gift. But then we had him as a guest on BLT and he talked about it in great detail, so I figured it was now fair game for the el-blog-o. So I'll share it with you and hope you love it too!

We talked before the wedding about gifts...did we want to do them or not? Well I already had a gift all lined up...so I just needed to know if I needed to go spend-crazy on another gift. But we decided since we were doing a destination wedding, we should go low-cost on the gifts.

He had no idea I'd started his wedding gift in 1997.

Yes. 1997.

Not even 19 years old and already aching to be married. Aching to know who I'd spend my life with. Bubbling over with dreams, wishes, hopes, fears, and thoughts to share with the person I'd live with for life.

And I didn't know who he was or where he was.

So I started writing letters.

And I wrote...and wrote...and wrote.

Careful handwriting, dreams transcribed on paper...
...hoping one day the man who wanted to make me his would understand my dreams and hopes and desires and my choice to put them on paper out of love for him.

And in all honesty, as I dated now and then, it was a question I always asked myself. Would this man love, understand, and treasure those letters buried in my dresser drawer? Or would he cast them aside and call them stupid?

As time went by, my heart began to lose hope that this man existed, and the frequency of the letters slowed. It was almost painful to hope that he was out there. That he would find me. That he would take the risk to actually choose me.

And in late November, 2012, just days before our wedding, I penned the final letter in the collection. The first in three years. The first to actually bear a real name. The first time I returned to a dream born in an 18 year old heart.

I stacked them up in order and hid them in this treasure box...and with a mixture of hope and nervousness, I tucked them in a gift bag and packed them with the wedding boxes to travel to Florida.

That morning we sat on borrowed beach towels on the sands of Siesta Key, our shoes resting beside us, our toes digging into the sand, and Ryan pulled the box out of the bag. He looked at it in confusion and opened the lid. He stared at the top envelope and looked at me.

I explained to him what I'd done, and he looked at me with a combination of amazement and deep love...and pulled out the first letter.

I sat across from him in the sand, sipping coffee while the sun crept higher in the sky and watched as my husband-by-nightfall read the first letter. The one written in March of 1997. The one by the 18 year old girl who was a whole different girl than the one who sat on the sand. I saw a tear escape his eyes and relief flooded through me.

He liked them. He understood them.

He didn't read them all that day. In fact, we're still reading them. A couple of nights each week, before we go to bed, he'll pull the next letter out of the box and read it aloud to me while I bury my face in his shoulder, remembering that time in life and sometimes giggling at my own early-twenties silliness.


It was the perfect wedding gift for him. So glad I did it.