An Unexpected Wedding

Early last week, our priest asked me if I would be able to witness a wedding he would be celebrating at one of our mission churches. 

This church, to be specific.

He needed two witnesses to sign the official paperwork, both for the church and for the state. This couple was coming from out of state, knew no one in the area, and wasn't bring their own witnesses.

This meant I had never met the two people getting married. However! I love weddings, and I love this particular church, so I said I would be happy to attend and act as a witness. Another parishioner who lives near the church agreed to be the second witness, and we were all set.

I was very curious to meet this couple and to know how this wedding came to be at this particular church. I felt sure there was a story there. Indeed there was, and now I will share it with you.

Let's call the couple Henry and Jessica, in the interests of their privacy. They were very friendly and chatty, and very happy to share their story.

In 2016, Henry rode 4,000 miles on a bicycle from Florida to California as part of an initiative to raise funds and awareness for housing non-profits like Habitat for Humanity. Their route took them through our county. He has a picture of himself standing in front of that mission church's sign. He never forgot the church, or New Mexico. He told me that this was his favorite state of the ones he rode through.

Fast forward to now. Henry and Jessica live in Michigan. They have birthdays just one day apart in the first week of October and planned a trip to New Mexico so Henry could introduce Jessica to the state, and also so they could attend the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque to celebrate their birthdays. They were engaged, but didn't want the big wedding their families would insist on. 

Jessica is Catholic, and they did their pre-marital preparations at her parish in Michigan. But when they decided to make this trip to New Mexico, Henry showed her his photos of his time here and she saw the one of the church in the middle of nowhere. She suggested they get married there while they were on vacation. They didn't tell anyone they knew that they were going to do this.

They contacted our archdiocese, from whom they got the necessary approval and who contacted our parish priest, and there they were, with a wedding scheduled for 2 p.m. on a Thursday at a mostly-closed, remote New Mexico church.

And there I was, witnessing the wedding of two very nice people I met five minutes before their ceremony.

They didn't have a photographer, either, so I took some pictures of the ceremony for them with my phone, which I will not share with you because, again, privacy. But here's the altar just before the wedding.

After the wedding, they were continuing their New Mexico tour by going to Taos, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque. I'm sure they'll have a lot of fun and go home with a lot of stories to tell from those places, but I'm also sure nothing will beat the story of their wedding.