Celebrating our Wedding Anniversary by Burning Down the Tower Bridge

Prepare to die Tower Bridge

You know the saying if you love something so much you have to let it go? This is kinda like that.

One of the highlights of our wedding - besides all our friends & family being in the same room, exchanging vows with one of our best friends officiating, a surprise ride through the downtown with sparklers, being married! - was the cupcake tower my dad built for us.

My dad is amazing. Since before I was born he has been able to work magic with his hands. He spent most of his career as a finish carpenter and a Boeing wingman and his spare time building great things like a barn for our horses and sheep, epic vegetable gardens, new additions to the house and the absolute very best rocking horse I've ever seen.

So I shouldn't have been surprised that when I asked him to create a simple cupcake tower for our wedding he came up with this:

A perfect miniature of the Tower Bridge in London where Ian asked me to marry him. It had flags on the tip of every tower and cupcake, little British buses, and my dad and German brother even cheesily spelled out "E heart I" in cupcakes.

I was speechless at it's perfection. Leave it to my dad (with help from my mom) to take a simple request and create something more magical than in the wildest wedding dream boards of pinterest.

We ate the cupcakes, danced our faces off, and eventually the wedding was packed up and brought home. So where did the regal Tower Bridge end up?

First it was placed in my parents sun room where the cats enjoyed batting off flags and trying to walk the bridge. It was eventually moved to the garage where spider made intricate webs and began to call London their home.

Not a fitting end for as epic a structure as this. So what did we do? We burned that mofo down!

This might seem disrespectful, and indeed my parents laughed when I mentioned blowing it up. But clearly I was serious. It has been 4 years and none of us could bear to take it apart, but in I also couldn't stand to watch it's slow decay. I wanted to send it off in a fitting blaze of glory.

Saying our good-byes

Dad and his masterpiece

 Burning it down turned out to be a little trickier than expected. Note my cast & crew of aforementioned awesome mom and dad, nephew (the younger brother of my nephew who visited us in Berlin) and Mr. Mann Ian all (almost) failing to give the Tower Bridge it's proper send-off. Considering we have almost blown ourselves up before, it's surprising we had so much trouble taking down the bridge.

Today marks our 4th wedding anniversary and I can say it has been an adventure. After 10 years together - almost exactly a third of our lives - it seems safe to say that we are stuck together forever.

Happy Anniversary Ian!

(and thanks mom & dad. The tower will always be a fond memory, and possibly a burnt out spot in your backyard.)