When Brandon asked if I wanted to renew our vows, I didn’t even stop to think about it.
Hell yeah.
I’d marry that man a million times over.
Our wedding was perfect for us at twenty. We eloped home to Haywood County in the middle of fall, when the mountains were showing off. We wore jeans and T-shirts, and the whole thing was simple. It wasn’t about flowers or decorations or making sure everybody else had a good time. It wasn’t about putting on a show. It was just the two of us, exactly as we were. No pomp. No fuss.
Of course, twenty-year-old me didn’t know what twenty-five years of marriage would look like. And there were a few things we missed that mattered. A wedding gown — which, oddly enough, I think Brandon wanted more than I did. Having our families there. And maybe most of all, a church.
Twenty-five years will be 2027, and I’ve spent months thinking about where we should do this. The venue has become one of the most important parts of it for me because I don’t want to pick somewhere simply because it photographs well. I don’t want a pretty backdrop that could belong to anybody. I want a place that means something to us.
I’ve thought about going back to the mountains. A fall renewal at Lufty Baptist in Smokemont or Palmer Chapel in Cataloochee would be gorgeous, and Lord knows the mountains are a huge part of who I am. There is something really appealing about returning to the place where we got married the first time, especially with twenty-five more years behind us.
But I’m still working through some hard feelings over losing Dutch Cove, and I don’t want that cloud hanging over our anniversary. I want this to feel like celebrating what we have, not mourning something we lost.
I’ve thought about one of the old Scottish churches in the Sandhills, too. Long Street Church on Fort Bragg has crossed my mind more than once, although I’m certainly not holding my breath waiting for somebody to hand us the key. It would be meaningful in a completely different way. Brandon is from here. His earliest ancestors are buried in every churchyard for 10 square miles around Cross Creek.
And yet, for some reason, the Sandhills don’t quite feel right.
I’m not even sure I can explain why.
Maybe because when I think about twenty-five years together, I don’t want to go back to where either one of us came from. I want to go back to where we began.
Wilmington.
Southeastern North Carolina.
That’s where our story started, and we both have deep roots there. It’s where we met, where we fell in love, and where so much of the life we eventually built together took shape.
Which is probably why I keep circling back to a church with no roof.
St. Philip’s sits in Brunswick Town, right on the Cape Fear River, and calling it a church at this point is a little generous. There is no roof, and there is no floor except the ground itself. The windows are empty rectangles where the glass disappeared a long time ago. You can stand inside what used to be the sanctuary and look straight up at the sky.
I’ve been doing that since I was a little girl.
Brandon and I met across the river in Wilmington, and our girls grew up running around Brunswick Town the same way I did. They walked the same paths, climbed over the same old bricks, smelled that same Cape Fear River, and touched the same walls that I did when I was their age.
There is something about that that feels important to me now.
When I picture our vow renewal at St. Philip’s, I don’t really picture a ruin. I picture home.
And then there’s the history of the place itself.
It took fourteen years to build St. Philip’s. Construction started in 1754, and before they could even finish the church, lightning struck it and took the roof clean off. They had to start over.
When it was finally consecrated in 1768, it was the largest church in North Carolina and one of the finest religious buildings in colonial America. Somebody put a great deal of ambition into those walls.
It stood for eight years.
In 1776, British forces burned Brunswick Town to the ground, church and all. Nobody ever rebuilt St. Philip’s. What’s left are four brick walls, nearly three feet thick and still standing more than twenty-four feet tall in places. The roof never went back up. The congregation never came home.
Later, during the Civil War, Confederate soldiers built earthworks around the ruins but left the church itself alone. The walls took more punishment during the fighting, and they’re still there.
I didn’t grow up sitting in one of St. Philip’s pews. Nobody has for more than two centuries. But I grew up knowing those pews had once been there. I grew up knowing what that place had been, and I watched my own children grow up knowing it, too.
That’s what keeps pulling me back.
Because the church lost its roof, but it didn’t disappear.
It lost its floor. It lost its congregation. It was surrounded by war, fire and time. The world changed completely around it, and yet those walls kept standing.
And maybe that means more to me now than it would have twenty-five years ago.
I’ve tried to talk myself into a building with an actual roof. A beautiful one. A finished one. Somewhere that would keep the weather off our guests and look fantastic in photographs.
But every time I get close to choosing something else, I find myself back at St. Philip’s.
I can see the grass under my feet. I can feel those old bricks beneath my hand. I can hear the river, and when I look up, there’s nothing between me and the sky.
Twenty-five years of marriage isn’t pristine. It isn’t untouched. It isn’t the same thing it was when we were twenty.
We’ve had storms. We’ve lost things. We’ve changed. We’ve had to start over in ways neither of us could have imagined when we stood in those mountains in jeans and T-shirts and said our vows the first time.
But we’re still here.
And maybe that’s why I don’t want the perfect church.
I want the one that has already been through hell.
I want the one that lost its roof and kept standing.
I want the one that’s been sitting there beside the Cape Fear for nearly three hundred years, weathered and scarred and imperfect, still holding the shape of something that mattered.
I haven’t booked it. Maybe I’ll choose something else entirely. I have time.
But when I imagine our twenty-fifth anniversary, I end up in the same place: standing in the grass, with Brandon beside me, my hand on those old bricks, and the sky where the ceiling used to be.
And honestly, I can’t think of a better place to promise him another twenty-five years.
