Dear Steven,

We are approaching a year since we received the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and I am happily typing this at 3:30 in the morning on the anniversary of the day you asked me to be your bride. I have attempted to write this third part for the blog posts I have been writing about marrying you, but I have never been able to finish it as the words never seemed right. Yet here I am, nearly nine months after our wedding, drinking the baking soda water you made me to help with heartburn, as the fruit of our love kicks me as though she is going to bust through my poor belly skin.

We married in the small shrine we spent so many hours deepening our love for each other and our love for God. I am so blessed to have spent so many hours at your side gazing upon Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Our weekly Adoration dates are still among some of my favorite moments with you. If only you knew how much I thanked Him for the goodness you brought to my life and how often I begged Him to let me keep you, you would know how wonderful you are. Long before meeting you, I had asked God to place you in my life while I was sitting in the same little shrine, and He answered my pleading with a far greater Blessing than I knew I was asking of Him.

While wedding planning was stressful and not as easy as we hoped, our wedding was a quiet day focused on God and witnessed by incredible family members! We were well loved by friends and family in preparation for our marriage and have continued to be in our marriage. And throughout the planning, preparation, and the wedding itself, I felt peace knowing I was marrying you. You were graceful and calm even in pain and you showed so much love and patience. 

The ceremony itself was full of traditions and we incorporated as much as we could to further focus our life as one on God. I am so glad you wanted to include so many traditions in the wedding and that we were able to learn more about the value of each one during the planning. 

The golden matching wedding bands, a sign of unity, inscribed with J.M.J. (The initials of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph) were a wonderful way to commemorate the feast day we were receiving the Sacrament on and a reminder of our incredible role models in family life. The wedding bands will forever serve us as a symbol of the covenant we made with God and each other.

The coins (a.k.a. las arras) symbolizing the trust between groom and bride. The groom entrusts his finances to his bride, and the bride trusts her groom to care for them and their family. Traditionally the thirteen coins represent Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and his twelve apostles. This tradition is not only something you wanted to include for its rich tradition in Mexican culture, but also because it is an aspect of marriage you wholeheartedly wanted to live out. And you have, freely given all of your riches to me and I, in turn, will always strive to return to you the love, trust, and care you continuously bestow upon me.

The Lasso was an incredible reminder of the unity of marriage and a particularly special nod to our daily rosary which we had prayed since our first day of dating. The Lasso was placed on us in a figure “8” to represent infinity, signifying our entrance into the unbreakable Sacrament of Marriage.

Your determination to include the nuptial veil despite our struggles to find good resources on the meaning is probably the only reason I kept searching. Despite the practice being the norm in many Catholic cultures for a long time, it was difficult to find an explanation for the purpose of the veil, which was my requirement for each tradition to be included. Eventually, we found that the tradition was done as the veil is meant to represent the bright cloud that had descended upon God’s chosen people in the desert guiding and protecting them as a symbol of His covenant. Following that the nuptial veil symbolizes God’s covenant with us in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, ever leading us on our vocational path.

Initially we had decided not to include the tradition of the unity candle as we had found very little reason to incorporate the lighting of the candle, however Fr. Pablo Fuentes shared the beautiful reasoning of the candle the internet failed to provide us. He informed us how we would enter the Mass and light two individual candles to signify our coming as separate people coming freely to the Sacrament. Then, after our vows, we would use the individual candles to light a single candle as a symbol of unity. The individual candles then were extinguished as a sign of the end of our separate lives and the beginning of our life as one in Holy Matrimony. We were amazed and excited by the beauty of the tradition and a bit shocked we had not found this beautiful explanation in our hours of searching. It was an easy decision to add the unity candle into the ceremony upon hearing Fr. Fuentes’ explanation.

As we so often do, on our wedding day we requested the loving intercession of Our Blessed Mother Mary. Bringing a bouquet of roses to the statue of Our Lady of La Leche (whom the shrine is dedicated to) we prayed for a moment while listening to Alma Redemptoris Mater being sung. It was a beautiful moment to honor the Mother of God, Our Heavenly Mother who has so diligently heard our daily requests and brought them to Our Lord.

The crucifix, Blessed at our wedding, will serve as our family’s reminder of the call to live like Christ and love with a sacrificial love. Currently hanging in our living room I hope our children will always see and know the great love depicted in Our Lord’s crucified body on the cross He bore for our sins. 

By including these traditions we were able to focus more of our wedding planning on the Sanctity of marriage and have numerous reminders of the covenant we are living out today. 

To add to and highlight the beauty of the already incredible transcendence of the Holy Mass, we were Blessed with a friend’s incredible voice resounding beautiful music a cappella. One of the easiest and hardest tasks when wedding planning was choosing the music, as we are both quite passionate about liturgical music (Thank you for all the work, help, and the gift of your voice Adam!).The hymns chosen for the liturgy were chosen not only to honor each part of the Mass, but also to honor each member of the Holy Family on their feast. Be Thou My Vision was the processional song, followed by the Ave Maria as the entrance song for us to walk into in honor of Mary. Salve Pater Salvatoris was sung in Latin during the offertory in recognition of St. Joseph. For the Communion hymn Pan de Vida in honor of the Blessed Sacrament and was followed by a reflection with the Anime Christi chanted beautifully. To honor Mary during the presentation of the flowers the beautiful hymn of Alma Redemptoris Mater was sung in Latin. The music was absolutely incredible and added so much beauty to the wedding day.

There were so many details planned in the couple months between our engagement and wedding, but through all of them you were an engaged partner who worked diligently to set our wedding not as a pinnacle of our relationship, but as a beautiful start to a new life as one. As a sneak peak to the kind of sacrificial love you have demonstrated in our marriage, you gave up on your hope of baking our wedding cake in order to help finish making the kneeler your overzealous bride decided she just had to design and make by hand with you. Thank you! It is still one of my favorite things we did for the wedding. 

Additionally, your extraordinary spiritual director, Fr. Pablo lovingly celebrated our wedding Mass. And I have to give him credit for the remarkable advice and guidance he has provided you. It has been beautiful to watch your respect for him and relationship grow over time. We are truly Blessed by God with the incredible priests we have been influenced by in our lives.

Marrying you is a daily decision I love getting to make. Without a doubt you are the greatest gift (aside from Jesus) in my life. It took a long time to know why God spared my life at seven (see post “I’m Waiting”), but I am so glad He did because He had so much beauty to share with me by giving you to me as a spouse.

You are more than I ever could have hoped or imagined… My dreams were far too small for the beauty and greatness of the Blessing you are in my life. 

We became one on the feast of the Holy Family and you have demonstrated the answer to God’s call to be a good and holy spouse beautifully. You have led me in love, sacrifice, prayer, and so much more in our marriage thus far. With great patience and respect you listen to me and with great joy and strength you have sacrificed so much for our growing family. 

To have a spouse who loves me better than I have loved him is quite wonderful and difficult. Wonderful because I feel so much love, respect, and care in your actions, yet difficult because I want you to experience the love you generously bestow upon me. I often fall short in my attempts to whole heartedly love you with the sacrificial love that God has called us to in our marriage. You are a reminder of how deeply Jesus loves and how ardently He gives us everything we need. 

Thank you for asking me to be your bride. You are the greatest mere man to have as an incredible spouse and partner on the journey to Heaven. I hope we make it there hand in hand. I love you so much!

With love,

Your everlasting bride

J.M.J.