My Own Wedding and Engagement (Part One)

Get out your marimbas!

Since my book is for engaged couples getting ready for marriage, I am often asked about my own wedding and engagement. In this posting, I’ll share some memories from our wedding; in the next one, I’ll talk about our engagement—including some things I wish I would have realized at the time.

It’s been over six years since Tom and I were married on March 3rd, 2002. We had a destination wedding in Alajuela, Costa Rica, at the Vista del Valle Inn. The setting was beautiful—we were married overlooking a valley on the hotel grounds.

I was very nervous on our wedding day, so, in truth, I actually don’t remember too much about the ceremony. The ceremony was officiated by an attorney (in Costa Rica, at least at the time, weddings not held in churches were required to be performed by an attorney), with a special prayer said by my mother. I pretty much cried through the whole thing (tears of happiness, of course!).


After the ceremony, we took the requisite wedding pictures….



and then enjoyed a delicious lunch with our friends and family members who had made the trip….


complete with a wedding cake made of carrot cake (my favorite!).


We decided to forgo a more traditional wedding reception. After the lunch, our entire group went to the Monteverde Cloud Forest to go on a canopy tour. Here I am on the zip line above the forest…. (I don’t know which made me more nervous—the wedding earlier in the day or zipping so high above the forest!)



On the day after our wedding, Tom decided that, since he had just taken the plunge into marriage, he might as well take another plunge—this time by bungee jumping off a bridge into a ravine. Talk about something that can make a new wife nervous!


We spent the rest of the week enjoying Costa Rica with each other and with our friends and family.