The Most Verbose Wedding Vows Ever

Shark Cove, North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher

Noon

November 16, 2025

SARAH… You find Mr. Rogers creepy. Despite this, I still choose to love you. You’re the type of person who runs across 6 lanes of College Road traffic at night to help before Abi and I even realized two cars had crashed. I remember standing there frozen for a second, trying to make sense of the headlights and the noise, and before I could even react, you were already gone, moving across the road without thinking twice, the only person who didn’t hesitate. Abi watched you sprinting into the dark, and she said quietly, almost to herself, “That’s Mom.” And all I could do was nod and say, “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

On November 10th, 2022, we were in Atlanta to see my favorite band, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Towards the end of the second song, “First of the Last Glaciers,” something happened that changed how I forever feel about you. We were standing close to the stage, and a kid a few feet in front of us went down. No one seemed to notice him but me. No security guards, no medics, nor the band, nor the people standing around. Everyone was transfixed on the show. I was so scared for the kid. Obviously, I didn’t know what caused him to pass out on the floor or if he was going to get trampled. I knew what to do, though. I knew there was one person who could help. All I had to do was nudge you and point toward the kid. Without hesitation, you pushed through the crowd, and the kid became your patient. You were so assertive and decisive… and it was pretty hot if we are being honest. Watching you that night, the way you moved without hesitation, the way your presence alone created order and safety, I realized something that has stayed with me every day since: your influence saves lives from afar and lessens the pain in the world. Your influence and example give me the confidence to be a helper and a leader.

When the venue’s security and medics finally realized what was going on, you didn’t just go back to enjoying the show; you helped them take the kid to the back and waited with him until the ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital. If I remember correctly, he had a seizure. And you made your way back to me by the sixth song, when they played the most jaw-dropping version of “World Police and Friendly Fire” I have ever heard. I’ll never forget the look on your face after that song ended. Just awe-struck. This isn’t a concert review, though. This is about you and how in that moment you became my hero.

Mr. Rogers had a famous quote that said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things on the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ You’re the type of person he was talking about. The type of person who runs across 6 lanes of College Road traffic at night to help before Abi and I even realized two cars had crashed.” Since that night at the concert, when I watched you become the helper everyone hopes is nearby, I have become one too. My team at work, my bosses, and the hundreds of people we care for all know and can trust that when something scary happens, I will take control of the situation without hesitation and assertively lead those assisting me until the professionals arrive.

I am fortunate enough to have been raised by the kindest and most gentle woman to ever exist and to be able to work for, with, and have as my closest friends some of the most intelligent and impactful women in our community. I can now officially say that I am honored to have three beautiful daughters, each of them hilarious and each with their own unique personalities. Lilly, I love your sarcastic wit; it reminds me so much of myself when I was your age. Natalie, I love the way you always think outside the box and how you are always true to yourself. You inspire me every day more than you know. Abi, my little tornado of semi-controlled chaos. My best friend. You gave me something that no one else ever could or ever will again: the gift of being able to be a father. Not just a mom’s boyfriend, or a Todd, or a Nik aka “Nikolas with K”, or a stepdad, or even a dad, but a real father. So when you tell me you love me more, just know this… you’re wrong. Dead wrong. But it’s not a contest. If it were, though, I would win. I’m very competitive. I still tear up every time I see a text from Abi that says “I love you more,” so please don’t stop just because it’s not true.

To the most important woman in my life, I am lucky enough to be able to come home every day to the most brilliant, amazing, sexiest woman I know, who has impacted and changed me in more ways than I could begin to articulate.

Earlier this week, I went out two nights in a row to look for and capture pictures of the aurora borealis. It wasn’t that I don’t know how to capture pictures of it, I was just unlucky and kept going in between when the cycles of when the solar storm was reaching us. When I got home, Sarah had been cleaning the house to get it ready for Lily and Jordan’s arrival and there are a few trash bags by the door for me to take to the garbage can. On top of the bags of trash was a painting that I saw the first draft of when she and Abby had a painting party on Tuesday night. I wish I had painting abilities as much as I had writing abilities because I love when you guys have painting parties. It’s so sweet and looks so fun even though you both do get carried away sometimes when you go and accidentally buy $400 worth of paint supplies, wake two freight train hopping hobo artistes that won a $500 on a scratch off so he did the responsible thing and invested $400 of your money in art supplies, $95 in Boone’s Farm and Wild Irish Rose, and five dollars on cans of beans and Vienna sausages. And I love you both so much for it. It’s worth every penny.

When I saw the painting on top of the trash bag pile, it had been transformed from a really pretty painting of a forest at night into a forest at night exploding with color. You didn’t consciously know it, but you must’ve sensed it because you knew that I’ve been searching for the Aurora for two nights in a row and didn’t see anything about blackness where it was supposed to be. Yes, I mean the sky. But when I pulled in the driveway and looked over at the door to our home, the aurora borealis was right there, waiting for me, served on a platter of six trash bags. You gave me something I’ve always wanted to see, something to heaven wasn’t even able to give me. The painting is at my parents’ house if anyone wants to see it at the reception.

Love is patient, love is kind. I’m not going to continue because we all know the rest. It’s in the Bible and we hear it at every wedding. Every. Single. Wedding. Ever. I do take exception within the next two lines, though, because I believe that love should be proud and love gives you no choice but to boast. Ask anyone who was in our all-staff meeting last week when I told the entire organization about who I was marrying and about her amazing family. Yes, each of you. Individually. I was initially just going to let everyone know that I’d be out for two weeks, but as soon as I said why, I couldn’t shut up, and by the time I realized I was rambling, I got self-conscious and wrapped it up by accidentally soliciting donations for Good Shepherd to the entire staff of Good Shepherd. And then I said, “Wait, no, don’t do that. That’s not what I meant.” And then I said, “Wait,” again because I didn’t want them to not donate. I realized at this point I was fairly out of control and no one was going to come with a giant hook and drag me off stage, so I just mumbled, “You’re smart people. Do the right thing.” But that’s the effect you have on me every day, all the time, because I’m so proud of who you are as a person, how much you want, how much we’ve both grown over the last six years. I’m so proud that I’m able to have you as my person and that you’ve chosen me to be your person.

It took us nearly 18 years to meet. We went to prom together technically, but on a double date. We disappeared from each other’s lives for nearly a quarter of a century and reconnected through a joke about the Bolshevik Revolution and then a simple wave. Two weeks later, we knew we were falling in love. After six years of every up, down, and emotion imaginable, we are finally committing to spending the rest of our lives together, though it seems we’ve always been in each other’s orbit. Years ago, I remember you saying you thought your ex was your soulmate, and at the time it made me sad because I thought that meant I could never be that to you. But as the years have passed and we tore down the original foundation of our relationship, we built back something stronger, something more open, more honest. Something built to last any storm because we’ve weathered the worst of them hand-in-hand. Love is patient. Love gives another chance. Love never gives up.

I know now there’s something beyond a soulmate. I have you and you have me. We are one. I don’t know if it has a name. I don’t think it needs one. Something as limited as a soul will never be able to encompass a person who is your universe. I don’t know what happens after we die, but I do know that we have an unexplainable gravitational pull toward each other. I also know that we will find each other again, no matter how long it takes, in all of the lives that follow this one and that we have already found each other in all of the lives that preceded and flow parallel to this one.