When my wife and I married, we opted for a courthouse hitch, a trip to Paris, then a backyard celebration with close friends and family. One of the reasons to marry at all, we believed, was the involvement of people we care about in the declaration and promise of marriage. To that end, we came up with a plan (riffing off and expanding on ideas we’d seen elsewhere)…

Each attendee at the party would be assigned a word, something we agreed a great marriage should have — humor, authenticity, etc. The recipient would be someone who somehow symbolized the attribute to us, and would henceforth be a reminder to us to sustain and empower that aspect of our union. I hand-tooled the words onto the little candy tins everyone had at their assigned seats, and… It was a hit. Curiosity about everyone’s “word” led to a series of impromptu speeches by all. The evening was completely amazing and wonderful.

One guest has followed through in a particularly enjoyable way. Our friend James, who snow-boarded and mountain-climbed and things like that, represented “adventure” for us, and to this day we receive snapshots from around the world reminding us to be adventurous. And while neither of us has taken him up on his offer to join him in paragliding {gulp}, it sure is fun to hear about — and, as we did today,  receive pics of him actually doing  (yes, those are his feet).