Jamie and I recently had a 'non traditional' hand fasting ceremony with our friends & family here in Indiana. A year ago on that same day we 'ran' away to Des Moines, Iowa and legally got married with our friends Linda & Joe as our witnesses. It was a whirlwind of a weekend filled with birthdays and marriages and we decided that we would do a big celebration 'later'. Fast forward a year and life and time had gotten away from us and with only about 6 weeks to go we pulled off the most magnificent celebration with a cast of friends who jumped in to help us and be a part of it all. From Linda allowing us to use the Peaceful Grounds barn, to the crew at Marion County Fairgrounds who bent over backwards to make room for us , to our other Linda (Linda F as she will now be known) accepting our request that she drive from Iowa to come marry us (or 'fast' us as it will now be known) to Cara, John, Holly & Matt gifting us a shit tonne of beer, to the gift certificate for awesome wine that Scootie gave us, to Tracey jumping into the deep end at the last minute and being up for cooking all the food for us, to our camping friends Megan, Bethany, Kelly & Lori helping us to set everything up on Saturday and to everyone who stayed overnight to help us break down the next day....to the crew and all their kids that turned up to help us celebrate, to Ashre for having a reunion and drumming for us, Alayna for getting up on stage and singing for us, Cara for singing for us and thereby letting us do some mushy lovey dancing....it was a magical weekend and we want to do it all again next week.
As you will see by this photo, we were very happy :). Our hand fasting ceremony included ribbons filled with messages of love and wishes for us from our friends & family from all over the world that were mailed in, some arriving the day of the ceremony, and used as our 'binds' to connect us, in our love, to our community.
There was not one thing I would change.....except to make it last longer perhaps.
In joy, and love
Martine
