A day for celebrating and remembering (6 years together)

This post brought to you by my husband Chris. Read more of his writing here.

Saturday was a very special day for Risa and me, in which we spent the day remembering and celebrating for two different reasons. We were celebrating the mark of our sixth year since the day we got married. That was quite a day for us.  

The previous night—our rehearsal dinner—there was horrendous rain and tornados causing a lot of damage. Our wedding day though had the perfect weather to go with the perfect bride.

Below is a photo from our wedding and I just want to thank our photographers, Erin and I Photo, for the amazing photoshop work on me, otherwise people wouldn’t even notice I’m there.

So how do you go about celebrating not only your wedding anniversary but also taking the time to remember the baby that you lost? I was torn about exactly how to go about this, but I decided to try and make it fun with enough alone time for us to remember what has been going on.

How did I accomplish this? Well, first off I asked one of our friends if she would watch our fur baby so that I could book a room in the same hotel that we stayed on our wedding night. This was something I wanted to do for our fifth anniversary, but given the IVF cycle we were going through, I didn’t think it would be appropriate.

To add to it, I kept this a complete surprise and slightly bugged the hell out of Risa by telling her she had to be ready by 2:00 pm but gave no indication as to what we were doing, where we were going, or even if we were leaving at that time. She only found out when our friend rang the doorbell when she arrived to stay and watch Toby.

This year for our anniversary, I wanted to do something nice for the two of us. Six years is a great feat, but it isn’t a milestone like five or ten. Last year for our fifth, we weren’t able to have a big milestone night together as we had just found out the first IVF didn’t work, Risa was having a miscarriage, and we had lost Adam.

So, surprise romantic place to stay that brings memories of our wedding night but also give us the peace to talk about this past year? Check.

Next, I wanted to plan the night full of good food. When you crave some good food in Minneapolis, you have to go to Crave. The food is so amazing. Just look below and see the fresh-baked artisan bread and the delicious stir fry and fettuccine dishes. Add in a delicious sangria and great beer, and not only did that bring us back to the great food we had at our wedding, but the booze helped with easing the pain of remembering last year. Check check.

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Lastly, I wanted to find entertainment as we had six years ago, dancing the night away at our wedding so we could have a great time to forget our worries. This one fell into my lap by pure luck but I will take what I can get.  Minneapolis is hosting baseball’s All-Star game this week and with it, MLB puts on a concert for the fans that is free. While that’s all great, the headlining act this year was Imagine Dragons.  Risa and I both love Imagine Dragons and have always wanted to see them a second time. With luck and help from another friend, we ended up getting tickets to go see them. While I can’t compete with the awesomeness of their lead singer who Risa has a huge tiny crush on I felt for the whole night, I was doing okay.

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So while we did a lot of things to bring back the great memories of our wedding, we had a lot of time to ourselves and enjoyed being together and remembering what we had lost. Losing Adam on our anniversary was heart-wrenching, but it adds another level to our anniversary that we will never forget.

Going forward, we will always be celebrating and remembering the emotions of losing him. While we learn to live through our loss, we will never forget how much we have gone through in order to build our family. Our anniversary will always be for celebrating and remembering these major events in our lives, the start of our life with each other, and the love for our lost baby.