Our wedding was unconventional—exactly what Matt and I wanted. We both had failed marriages in our past, so we planned to do something different this time to symbolize our desire that this one would last: a sunrise ceremony on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan, releasing balloons instead of lighting a unity candle, to signify letting go of the past. We even wrote our own vows and put them in a bottle. To share our love with the world, we would cast the bottle into the lake. I included our names, address and the date of our wedding: Matt and Melody Behrs, Married at the Wind Point Lighthouse, August 18th. “It would be interesting to find out where it turns up,” I told Matt.
Matt threw the bottle in, but the wind blew it back toward me. I laughed as it landed at my feet. On his second try, the bottle barely made it into the water. With our luck, that bottle won’t go anywhere, I thought. After seeming to bob in place for awhile, it drifted away and I turned toward Matt. One thing was certain. I was lucky to have found him. We’d been together for five years, and I wanted this marriage to last. In the back of my mind, though, I had doubts that I was cut out for marriage, doubts that we could make it work. I wanted to silence all those negative thoughts.
One day, about a month later, happily settled in my new home with Matt, he went to the mailbox and took out the mail. There was a letter addressed to Matt and Melody, with a return address Matt didn’t recognize.
He carried the mail inside, sat down at the kitchen table with the letter and opened it. Our bottle had been found! A couple discovered it while walking their dogs—all the way over on the Michigan side of the Great Lake. But that wasn’t all. Matt read the rest aloud to me in disbelief and, as he did, I felt the last of my doubts disappear.
“We were also married on the beach, on this side of the lake,” the letter read, “just like you, on August 18—twenty-eight years ago. We wish you both the best.”
Did you enjoy this story? Subscribe to Guideposts magazine.
