Julie & Tom
“You can’t put a price on the experience we just had with our grown children,” says Julie. “It was profound.”
Julie is referencing the anniversary trip that the family of four Vancouverites recently returned home from.
Julie and Tom, her husband of 28 years, decided to not only revisit the Greek island where they eloped in 1995, but to invite their sons into their memories with them.
Both Canadians, living in Los Angeles at the time, Julie, an actor, and Tom, a film editor, had imagined a runaway marriage in Italy after dating for four years, until they found out that Italian matrimonial law required witnesses that had known them for longer than a day or so.
That’s when they decided to get married in Greece, where all they needed under Greek law was their marriage licence, translated into Greek by consular services, and no witnesses.
They chose the island of Paros, where neither of them had been, and which had airport access. “I also loved that it sounded like Paris,” adds Julie.
Before landing in Paros, the couple travelled extensively through many of Europe’s vibrant cities, starting in Paris, then Florence, Venice, and Rome, staying in Bed & Breakfasts and exploring their cultural interests, mostly on foot.
Their Greek wedding was the apex of the adventure. “We were never completely sure that we were married to each other,” they laugh, “because the ceremony was completely conducted in Greek.”
It was always their intention to celebrate their 25th anniversary, in 2020, back in Paros. They wanted to introduce their two sons, by then in their early 20s, to their past by retracing their 1995 travels.
When the pandemic got in the way, they deferred their adventure until 2023.
Julie, now 63, and Tom, 75, knew it was high time to relive their memories. This time, they also invited extended family and friends to join them in the Paros celebration that was held on the same day and at the same time in early May as their elopement 28 years earlier.
The family of four, after the Paros party, then headed out to re-trace, in reverse, Julie and Tom’s European travels.
“The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, for example, had been closed for renovations in 1995 when we were there, and this time we were able to spend hours languishing in the company of Renaissance art,” says Julie. “Whereas in Venice, we ended up doing mostly everything we had done on our earlier trip.”
Spending the same amount of time on this trip as they had in the past, the family of four created new memories in the present, for all of them to embrace into the future.
“It’s in the follow-up of the experience that you realize how meaningful it was,” says the couple. “We absolutely loved sharing what we loved with our adult children. You only know it by doing it.”
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