Today is Our 18th Wedding Anniversary.
People who don’t live in the Washington, DC area can be surprised by its summer weather.
Summer here can get hot. It stays in the upper 80’s and 90’s for most of the summer – which usually starts at the beginning of May and doesn’t end until the end of October. It goes above 100 degrees on a regular basis.
It is sunny nearly all the time, which means standing in the direct sun can add another ten degrees to what – in my cloudy hometown of Pittsburgh – might be what “87 degrees” is expected to feel like.
And the humidity can be absolutely brutal. Unlike the hundred-degree weather in the western parts of the United States, where the desert makes the air particularly dry and relatively comfortable on summer days, the hundred-degree days here feel like a sauna. When I open my door in the morning – sometimes every day for weeks – it feels like I am opening a giant oven. The heat gushes into the house in waves.
So when I decided to get married – outside – in August, people were skeptical.
I felt completely confident that it would be fine. We got some shady pavilions for guests, for the reception. The service was outside, too, under a very big tree in a local park.
At one point, I got a few signs from God that I was doing the right thing: a deer in the woods, a groundhog nearly climbing up my leg as I sat on a picnic table. (The stories of how these are “signs” would take too long.) So I never, ever questioned the weather.
When our wedding day came – August 7, 1999 – our guests arrived in droves. They sat in their chairs outdoors and we got married under a tree, as expected. We had our reception with the help of some shady pavilions.
And the weather was absolutely glorious. It was not hot, nor humid, and there was a light breeze blowing the entire time. We all loved the experience, which was entirely untraditional. It turned out better than anyone could have anticipated.
But I often wonder about the weather. Our summers are crazy hot – but not that day.
So I looked back at the “weather history” on the internet. For our area, for that week in 1999, the high temperature was 98 degrees. This could have happened on my wedding day, but it did not. Instead, the mean temperature for the week was 82 and the average temperature for the week was 73.
It was perfect! I thank God for that. After all, He sent the deer and the groundhog, to let me know it would be okay.
This past weekend – in 2017 – showcased the same glorious weather. I spent as much time as possible outside, enjoying the breeze. The week before was typical sauna weather – which made this past weekend so much more glorious.
Today is our 18th anniversary. I also thank God for getting us this far. I think the weekend weather was a fitting tribute.
And I think that someone mighty special must have gotten married outside this weekend, since God did it all again for them.