Married couple spending vacation on St. Maarten celebrate wedding anniversary in style the way one only can in St. Maarten. Story and photo’s by Milton Pieters.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith celebrate wedding anniversary in style

By Milton G Pieters

GREAT BAY– In most cases, after one’s wedding day, it’s the last time a bride would be seen in her elaborate or not so elaborate wedding gown. But Carter Smith had an ace up his sleeve when he arrived on the Friendly Island with his wife Michelle.

Carter and Michelle were legally married after a well-organized but surprised elopement, but that was since July 5, 2014 and that wedding took place in Vancouver, BC, on Kitsilano Beach, Michelle’s home town.

The tying of the nuptial knot was done in a more formal manner on October 11th, 2015 in New Orleans, Louisiana, which happens to be Carter’s home town. So when the decision was made to pack their bags and come to St Maarten, little did Michelle know what she was about to experience.

Last Friday, as hundreds awaited the arrival of a KLM flight at the edge of the runway, Carter and Michelle stood out from the crowd due to the fact that they were fully dressed in wedding attire. “We waited to have our honeymoon so this trip is the one year anniversary of our formal wedding and our honeymoon,” Carter said.

The big question was, why St Maarten? “A friend of mine in Vancouver is an air traffic controller and he’s the one who told me about the planes. When I thought about it and the fact that it was going to be our anniversary I decided to sneak Michelle’s dress into our luggage and surprise her with the idea. We wanted to go somewhere tropical with nice beaches and St. Maarten sounded perfect. It came highly recommended by a few friends who had been to the island as well, so we were very excited and we have not been disappointed. I think Michelle was a little anxious about the whole idea but afterwards she was thrilled we did it,” Carter added.

According to Carter, they will definitely be back on the island, but not necessarily to mark another anniversary. “We kind of want to go to different places for our anniversary and take a bunch of more cool photos in our wedding garb to make a photo album. But the experience on the beach here was pretty spectacular.”

What Carter and Michelle did was to go back in time and rewrite their wedding vows with a twist and they are putting together a little video/photo montage of their time on the island.

Photo caption: Mr. and Mrs. Smith enjoy a spectacular wedding anniversary in St. Maarten. Photo’s Today / Milton Pieters