An outdoor ceremony - Fat Apple Farm - Columbus, WI

Abbie & Garrett’s original wedding plans had to change due to COVID-19. Rather than waiting another year to be married, the couple decided to have a small legal ceremony and sign the marriage certificate.

Last July, Abbie & Garrett were thrilled to be able to come together with family and friends to celebrate their journey. The ceremony took place outdoors, and it included live music, a choir that sang Garrett’s favorite selection, and a couple of beautiful readings by a friend.

Abbie grew up a few miles away from Fat Apple Farm (where the wedding took place) and she was so happy to have her wedding there.

The venue was great, very spacious, and had many options for great wedding pictures.

The readings that were chosen for the ceremony:

Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.

All I Know About Love by Neil Gaiman

This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing.

This is everything I've learned about marriage: nothing.

Only that the world out there is complicated, and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain, and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes, is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze, and not to be alone.

It's not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it's what they mean. Somebody's got your back. Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn't want to rescue you or send for the army to rescue them.

It's not two broken halves becoming one. It's the light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both safely home because home is wherever you are both together.

So this is everything I have to tell you about love and marriage: nothing, like a book without pages or a forest without trees.

Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them because no study can prepare you for the joys of the trials. Because nobody else's love, nobody else's marriage, is like yours, and it's a road you can only learn by walking it, a dance you cannot be taught, a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.

And because you will reach out a hand in the darkness, not knowing for certain if someone else is even there. And your hands will meet, and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again.

And that's all I know about love.