5 Year Wedding Anniversary

"Congratulations to my Wife"

Today is a special day, today 5 years ago my wife and I got married in Caesarea, Israel! I will always think about this day with mixed feelings.

_{Caesarea on our wedding day, the coolest day of the week.}

Choosing the Venue

My wife and I had opted to get married in Israel for several reasons. First and foremost we both have lots of friends and family there who otherwise couldn’t have made it to our wedding. Another important reason is that we’re both Jewish and it is special to get married in Israel.

We chose Caesarea as it’s a place that brought back memories of our engagement and it’s also one of the first places we visited on one of our first trips to Israel together. Caesarea is a town that was built by the Romans and you still see remnants of the Amphitheatre, the Colosseum (which is still being used for concerts) and many other buildings such as the walls (with moat) and even an aqueduct.

I asked my wife to marry me on our first trip to Rome. Rome was always high on my wishlist and my wife wanted to surprise me for my birthday. Unfortunately she has difficulties keeping secrets and I found out pretty quickly and I turned the tables on her and used the occasion to ask her to marry me. At that time we were together for 8 months.

So you can imagine that Caesarea reminded us slightly of Rome and it was also our wish to get married on or near the beach, so that also made Caesarea, as an old harbour town, an ideal location.

the Build-up

In the days leading up to our marriage I started to get very nervous. My wife and I had only been together for just over a year, but that was not a reason to be nervous, as by then we were already officially married for 6 months.

_{Me on our wedding day, the moment I saw my wife for the first time in her dress}

To avoid complications, we got married in Switzerland on the 26^th November. We chose the 26^th November as it was exactly 6 months before our planned wedding in Israel, this way we can celebrate an anniversary every half a year. The wedding in Switzerland was just a formality for us, to avoid any future complications with having our wedding-certificate translated and officiated. So my FiL and BiL were our witnesses and besides their wives and my little cousin, no one else was in attendance. To this day my parents don’t even know about this ceremony as it is insignificant for us and we didn’t want them to bother making the trip for no reason and save their money for the more important trip to Israel.

The main concern I had in Israel was whether the Rabbi would turn up (on time) to marry us before sunset. It was our dream to have these beautiful pictures with the sun setting behind us. Rabbi’s in Israel are also notorious for having busy schedules and thus turning up late as they are held up at a previous event.

This, combined with the warm weather caused me to be sick for 4 whole days leading up to the wedding. My wife and I had been dieting before the wedding, however I could’ve neglected that if I knew I would be sick before the wedding as I must’ve lost another 4 kilos in those 4 days. In the end all those worries were silly as our Rabbi turned up on time.

the Day

_{the Rabbi is writing our marriage certificate, did you know that the marriage certificate is in Aramaic, not Hebrew, as most people would expect?!}

In hind sight we should’ve been more worried about the photographer. First of all, he came late by almost 45 minutes so we had less time to take our official wedding pictures, then we found that many pictures were taken from a weird angle and to top it all off, he’d done a ’private photo-shoot’ with one of our guests who’d recommended him to us in the first place. We saw this in the pictures he gave to us after the wedding. As we received a set of all the pictures.

He didn’t help us in any way posing or standing in certain ways, we had to make it all up as we went along, you’d think someone who’s taking wedding pictures for a living can give some pointers to a couple where to stand, how to pose, etc.

The video was even worse, we had to wait for months to receive it and when we finally did it looked like something that a student fresh into school had done on his mobile-phone.

The wedding ceremony and the feast itself ran smoothly and we had a fantastic time. We had a beautiful ceremony and we also got that picture with the setting sun behind us.

5 years onwards

5 years further on we have an amazing journey behind us. We’ve travelled to fantastic places together, such as South-Africa, Lisbon, Dubai, Washington, Maldives, we have a lot of fun, we have great friends and a great life, we have 2 fantastic children, we have our own apartment and most importantly … we are still very happy and in love.

What makes our marriage work?

• We both have the mentality that we want to make it work
• From the moment I met her I could see myself grow old with her
• We are both willing to make compromises, she makes them more than I do, but I moved to Switzerland to make it work (not that it was such a difficult decision, but she would never have left the country … I know that now)
• We have great children to fight for every day
• We are still very much in love

So a big thank you and congratulations to my wife @newslady. I know I haven’t always been the easiest person to be with, but she’s stuck it out with me and we have 5 fantastic years with both ups and downs to look back on and also to learn from, so that we can be together for many more years, if health permits us.

I love you @newslady!

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Thanks

🐺je