To get back into the wedding recap, I have to rewind to one week before the wedding, when Justin and I drove from Seattle to Glacier National Park for a pre-wedding vacation. When we arrived, I was exhausted and fed-up. I wrote:

The truth is that the last two weeks have been absolute hell, and I have wanted, very badly, not to be dealing with this wedding any more [...] I am tired of unreturned phone calls and email, missing critical details, and misinformation. I am ready to break up with our wedding.

But as soon as we crossed state lines from Washington to Idaho and Idaho to Montana, my stress lifted. And this is why the drive to Montana is my favorite rite of passage: The beautiful scenery was passing, and I was a full part of the journey to my favorite place to marry my favorite man.

And, between you and me, I planned to marry him not once, but TWICE.

Why? Don’t worry; we’re getting there…

We arrived, and after a quick Saturday-evening trip to Polebridge to iron out some of the kinks for the next weekend’s rehearsal and wedding, we settled in at Lake McDonald Lodge. Though we’ve been to the park every summer for the last nine years, staying at the Lodge was a first for us – we’re usually hosting friends at the Speyer family cabin just a half-mile up Going to the Sun Road.

But this year was so different from the rest. Here we were, in the same place we’d first fallen in love… in the same place we’d been engaged two years ago… ready to finally wed!

Though we found ourselves staying in a strange room and surrounded by family in the place we usually came to be alone the view was just as beautiful as ever:

The first day of the trip we had to ourselves and I can’t recall a single thing we did. I was so exhausted that it was an unbelievable respite just to be in Glacier, breathing the fresh (if somewhat unseasonably cold) mountain air.

Monday morning, we were joined by our good friends Rachel and Micah, who were also our MOH & Best Man duo. (You met them in this post) They’d taken a sleeper car of the Amtrak Empire Builder from Seattle and LOVED it. What a way to travel in style!

We readied ourselves for the two-night backpacking trip we had planned, and early Tuesday morning, we set out on the long drive from West Glacier to Many Glacier over Logan Pass. The clouds lifted, the sun shone, and we were among friends in a place that looked like heaven. It was a good day to get married.

Click the photos below for biggity versions:

The four of us arrived at Many Glacier to meet four more friends – all virgins to GNP – at the Swiftcurrent Lodge. It was here that I had dreamed of being married when Justin proposed to me in 2006. But the remoteness of the site – and Park regulations surrounding it – made that dream little more than a fantasy until friends suggested a pre-wedding backpacking trip in this part of Glacier.

I knew I would regret not taking the chance to have even a faux wedding in Many Glacier. So, we decided to stage a simple ceremony, just us and our backpacking friends on the shores of Swiftcurrent Lake:

I wrote a bit more about our secret wedding already. To recap:

Our friend Kyle officiated, and others witnessed and took pictures. We let Kyle have free reign to make a simple (and funny) ceremony, and made up vows on the spot. The whole thing only took a few minutes and afterward, we celebrated with champagne and “backpackers wine”, all while looking out at this gorgeous view.

Here’s Kyle, with preacher collar and Montana hat:

None of us took any of it very seriously, even though we were fulfilling what was, to me, a very special dream. That’s the great part about being a kid at heart – making lifelong memories while laughing your ass off the whole time.

We said some sweet, completely irreverent vows (i.e. “I will love you, even if you do World of Warcraft Raids three nights a week, because you make the best beef stew for me and even put in extra carrots… yada yada) and were married!

Has anyone else been “married twice”?

Then it was off with us the six miles to Cracker Lake where we would freeze, bleed, vomit, and fight until we returned on Thursday afternoon. Do I have your attention now? Good! Stay tuned for the epic conclusion to our pre-wedding trip in our next edition of “Married in Montana… Chaos at Cracker Lake!”

Filed under: Ceremony, Photos, Recap on November 7th, 2008