We never found a lighthouse in Miami Beach or all of the Keys! Key Biscayne was "closed for repairs." Key West was by reservation only. The only other lighthouse in the Keys was a few miles out in the ocean on Alligator Reef.
I admit I was getting down. I know we were engaged only a couple of weeks, and we shoehorned our wedding into an existing trip. We would not have chosen Miami Beach as a wedding location, but we wanted to get married quickly after waiting almost fourteen years.
Larry had planned to surprise me the previous summer in Stockholm with a proposal and wedding in Iceland. The surprise element was hard for him to pull off because of all manner of records required by Icelandic government. I would have loved a proposal in Stockholm, but I don't know if I would have wanted a surprise wedding. For one thing, our luggage was lost, and all I had to wear was a pair of brown hiking pants and muddy boots. Nevertheless, I remain touched and awed that Larry tried to pull off such a surprise.
Before I knew it would be a wedding/moon, I booked a four-night stay in a little place right on the beach in Pompano Beach. I recalled there was a lighthouse in the background in some of the property photos and pinned my hopes for one last chance for our sunrise vow ceremony at a lighthouse. I had written my vows around the metaphor of a lighthouse, and it is a symbol to me of Larry's love and light. We have visited lighthouses all over the world, and they are symbolic of our our journeys together.
Our first evening in Pompano, we unpacked and walked out the back door, over the little bridge and the canal, then to the beach. We were going to walk to the lighthouse and scope out our wedding venue!
But nope. That did not happen. A huge shipping channel separated us from the lighthouse, so we had to figure out how to get there by car. We had hoped not to get in a car for the next four days because Florida traffic, specifically SE Florida traffic is horrendous. We finally found the road to the lighthouse only to learn that it was located in a snooty gated community, and the important rich people living inside only allowed "the public" to visit the lighthouse once per year.
At this point, I almost gave up in tears. Larry did not know about vows and why the lighthouse was important to me. I decided to show him my vows so he would understand my frustration of the previous two weeks of trying to have a quaint beautiful meaningful wedding. When I returned to the room where I had left him with the vows, he was crying. Oh dear. Now I'm crying, too. It seems the only fight we ever had in fourteen years was about the wedding. He now understood that while he thought the courthouse ceremony was perfect, I had hoped for something more personal and beautiful.
Seeing him care so much made all the difference. As I drifted off to sleep, I came up with a last-chance plan. The lighthouse was clearly visible from our beach. The bridge, canal, and surrounding homes, indeed looked very much like a beautiful seaside village. In fact, the area was beautiful! I decided that we could have a sunrise ceremony right on our own beach and still have the lighthouse in the distance.
I woke up the next morning to Larry taking notes and scrolling the internet. While I was making plans, so was he. He looked up photographers and how to get married at the Vizcaya Gardens.
Again, I started crying. We both wanted the other to be happy! But driving all over tarnation again to Miami and back again did not sound like a good time. I told him my idea and promised that it would make me happy and that we needed a vacation from the wedding. He liked my idea but again asked if I would want to hire a wedding coordinator to have a photographer, decorations, readings, etc. Okay, had we more time to plan such a thing, maybe, but it was just the two of us. Setting up even a small production just wasn't necessary.
I walked him over the bridge of the canal and asked him to look at how beautiful it was at sunrise. Then we walked to the beach to watch the sunrise, and sure enough, there was the lighthouse.
"Meet me on this bridge at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning."
And we did, and we did, and we did!
We met on the bridge, walked through the mangrove and to the beach and said our vows. A passerby happened to take a photo and shared it with us later.
We had a wonderful day. We played on the beach! That evening we had champagne and pizza.
Two days later we left for our cruise.
We had a wonderful stay at Pompano Beach and had a gorgeous sunrise vow ceremony in the vicinity of a lighthouse.
