If you’ve followed our family for very long, you already know that Jose and I don’t celebrate anniversaries the way normal people do.
Normal people go out to dinner. Normal people exchange gifts. Normal people enjoy a quiet evening together.
We, on the other hand, somehow ended up planning an entire evening where married couples had to answer personal questions about each other, compete in games that should probably never be played in church, and publicly prove whether they actually know the person they’ve been married to for the last decade or more.
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how we got here.
Actually, that’s not true.
I know exactly how we got here.
It Started With Our Wedding
We got married in Haiti on May 25th, 2001 because we wanted to celebrate with the people we planned to spend our lives with.
Apparently, half the town and government delegations decided they wanted to celebrate with us too. More than 1,000 people showed up. Our wedding was held outdoors, and people packed every available space hoping to catch a glimpse of the ceremony.
Some stood for hours. Others climbed onto rooftops. A few probably had better seats than our actual guests.
Then, midway through the ceremony, a television crew arrived from Port-au-Prince.
During it.
Nothing says “romantic wedding” quite like cameramen running through a crowd carrying equipment while you’re already standing at the altar. If I close my eyes, I can still hear the sharp squeal of microphone feedback bouncing across the courtyard every time their sound crew wandered a little too close to the speaker, which was often and apparently nobody’s concern.
Somehow they managed to get enough footage that for the next decade or so, portions of our wedding regularly appeared on the local television station around 3:00 in the morning.
If you happened to be awake at that hour, there was a decent chance you’d stumble across Jose and me getting married.
Even today, people occasionally ask if we’re the same couple who got married in the large courtyard with the fireworks that went more down than up and caused half the crowd to start running.
We are. And honestly, that description narrows it down surprisingly well.
Why This Night Matters
One of the things I love about Haiti is that people know how to celebrate.
If there’s a wedding, everybody comes. If there’s a graduation, everybody comes. If there’s a baptism, everybody comes. Baby dedications, church anniversaries, conferences, birthdays, community events…
Haitians know how to gather better than almost anyone I’ve ever met. What they don’t get very often is a night specifically for married couples. Not families. Not ministries. Not churches. Not entire neighborhoods.
Just husbands and wives.
A reason to dress up. A reason to laugh. A reason to spend a few hours remembering that marriage is supposed to be enjoyed. No children hanging on your legs. No ministry responsibilities. No school concerns. No community problems to solve.
Just a few hours focused on the person you married.
Several years ago, we celebrated our twentieth anniversary by inviting around 130 friends. There was food, music, decorations, games, and enough planning to make me question every life decision that had led me to that moment. -Our 20th Anniversary Party
It ended up being one of my favorite nights we’ve ever hosted.
This time we wanted something a little more intimate. Just twenty couples. Community leaders. Pastors. School directors. Ministry staff. And some of my favorite people on the planet.
The Invitation
We sent invitations that included everything from dress code reminders to game-night warnings. The evening wasn’t designed to be formal. It was designed to be memorable.
Everyone was warned ahead of time that participation would be expected. Looking back, I’m not sure everyone believed us.
The Rules & Announcements
There were score sheets. There were teams. There were challenges. There were opportunities for public embarrassment.
Everything a healthy marriage celebration should include. Some couples arrived confident. Some couples arrived nervous. Four hours later, everyone was thoroughly exhausted from laughing.
Some discovered their spouse was far more competitive than expected.
Some discovered their spouse definitely could not dance.
Some learned that twenty-five years of marriage does not automatically mean you know the answer to every questionnaire question.
And more than a few remembered how nice it feels to hear the person you’ve loved for years laugh until they can barely catch their breath.
The Oath
One of my favorite moments of the evening was the marriage oath that they had to repeat. Not because it was serious. Quite the opposite. It was playful, ridiculous, and full of promises that probably should not appear in any official marriage counseling curriculum.
But it reminded all of us of something important.
Marriage isn’t sustained only by big moments. It’s sustained by thousands of ordinary ones. The inside jokes. The shared struggles. The stories nobody else understands. The daily decision to keep showing up.
And while the games would eventually become the main attraction, first there was the small matter of transforming an ordinary church into something that felt a little magical.
The Set-Up
I spent weeks planning the evening. Not because I’m especially organized. But because I knew exactly what I wanted this evening to accomplish. I wanted husbands and wives to laugh together. I wanted people who spend most of their days carrying responsibilities to set them down for a few hours.
I wanted pastors to stop being pastors.
School directors to stop being school directors.
Ministry leaders to stop solving problems.
And for one evening, I wanted everyone to simply be husbands and wives.
So we transformed the church.
The tables were dressed in gold and white. Lights stretched across the ceiling. Food covered every available surface. There were prizes & envelopes waiting to be won, score sheets waiting to be filled out, and just enough uncertainty in the room for everyone to know something unusual was about to happen.
At first people arrived cautiously. They greeted friends. They admired the decorations. They posed for pictures. They laughed politely. But the longer they stayed, the more the room began to change.
The conversations got louder. The smiles got bigger. And somewhere between dinner and the first game, people stopped wondering what was going to happen and started looking forward to it.
That’s when I knew the night was going to work.
The Couples & Atmosphere
One of my favorite parts of the evening wasn’t actually the games. It was watching people enjoy each other. Pastors laughing. Community leaders competing. Staff members cheering each other on. Couples who spend most of their days carrying responsibilities finally setting those burdens down for a few hours.
For one evening, nobody needed to lead anything.
Nobody needed to solve anything.
Nobody needed to fix anything.
They simply got to enjoy the person sitting beside them.
And honestly, that’s something worth celebrating.
Some Of The Games
Of course, nobody came just for the decorations. Eventually, it was time for the games.
The questionnaires were collected. The scores were tallied. Couples who had spent the evening smiling politely suddenly became very interested in winning.
You could almost see it happen. One minute they were discussing the food. The next minute they were quietly sizing up the competition from across the room.
The first few games were innocent enough. At least that’s what we told them.
There were memory games. There were challenge games. There were questions that revealed some couples communicate with remarkable depth and intentionality.
There were also questions that revealed some husbands have apparently been improvising for the last decade.
We learned that knowing your spouse’s favorite food and knowing what they actually wrote on their questionnaire are two entirely different skill sets.
We learned that some couples share one brain. Others simply share an address.
There was cheering. There was laughter. There was a surprising amount of negotiation between spouses.
There were several moments where husbands confidently answered a question and immediately realized, based solely on their wife’s facial expression, that they had made a terrible mistake.
Others cost the walk home.
Then came the physical competitions. That’s when the truly surprising discoveries began.
Apparently some people have been hiding athletic abilities from their spouses for years. Others have been successfully hiding the complete absence of athletic ability.
There was dancing.
There was balloon popping.
There were ping pong balls flying.
There were life choices.
By the end of the evening, several school directors were considering calling in sick, a few pastors were hoping their congregations had short memories, and more than one couple was making a silent agreement not to tell anyone they were even invited!
Fortunately, we banned videos.
Jose and I were fully prepared to have our dance competition recorded until Malaya refused and loudly declared: “Ain’t nobody wanna see that.”
Twenty-five years of marriage and that’s the encouragement we get from our own child. I guess some memories are better preserved through storytelling than documentation.
But as the evening came to a close, I found myself looking around the room and thinking about all the stories represented there.
Stories of beginnings and fresh starts. Stories of hard seasons that nobody else saw. Stories of prayers answered, prayers still waiting, and countless moments in between. Because every marriage carries a history that can never be fully understood from the outside.
Still Choosing Each Other
Twenty-five years ago, Jose and I stood in front of more than a thousand people and promised to build a life together.
We had no idea where that promise would take us. Through ministry. Through children. Through Haiti. Through victories, losses, laughter, and more adventures than either of us could have imagined.
Maybe that’s why this evening felt so special. Not because of the decorations. Not because of the games. Not even because of the anniversary itself.
But because for a few hours, a room full of husbands and wives stopped looking ahead to everything that still needed to be done and simply celebrated how far they had already come.