After being married more than 19 years, 38-year-old Lorri Morrow is getting to walk down the aisle for the first time.

She and her husband Bill are renewing their vows at Clements Baptist Church in a 2 p.m. ceremony Saturday.

They celebrated their 19th wedding anniversary on January 16, and this year Bill thought of something different to do to celebrate the occasion. He discussed the idea of having a church wedding for Lorri with their three daughters, Brittany, Amberlee and Chelsy. After deciding not to chance letting a year slip by and someone not be here, Bill decided to go ahead with the plans for a church wedding, even though year 19 wasn’t a milestone.

“She always told me she wanted one,” Bill said.

Bill and Lorri married in 1987 after an on-again-off-again courtship that lasted approximately six months while they were stationed in Germany during a tour with the Army. They met at the kennel where Bill was working at the time. He was part of the Military police and worked with attack dogs. He said that two girls came in and his coworker was talking with them.

“I wouldn’t mind going out with the one sitting on the right,” he said he told his coworker after the girls left.

“We spent more time broke up than actually dating,” Lorri said. “It was one of those known things. We knew we were going to be together.”

“”We ended up getting married, stayed there (Germany) three years, and our first daughter was born there,” Bill said.

The day they married in Germany wasn’t the most romantic and certainly not what most girls expect of their wedding day. They were married by the mayor of the German town Siegelsbach, who didn’t speak English, and they were accompanied by two witnesses and an interpreter.

Bill has arranged for those two witnesses, Greg and Ann Fitch, to be in town Saturday and serve as the best man and matron of honor. Bill also has taken a lot of areas of the wedding planning into his own hands, such as picking out the wedding rings and Lorri’s wedding gown. He has also lined up the pastor for the ceremony.

“I don’t have a romantic bone in my body,” Lorri said. “He makes up for it.”

Bill wanted to keep the wedding a secret, but with all the people who knew about it he thought that would be difficult. The first Lorri knew of the plans for a church wedding was after the two had dinner a Cracker Barrel one night. Bill lured Lorri to the fireplace and got down on one knee. He said her lips start trembling.

“I thought he’d fallen and hurt himself or something,” Lorri said. “I never even thought it was possible. I never thought of ever getting to do anything like this.”

According to Lorri, after 19 years the feelings for each other have grown stronger.

“I think I’m old enough to know what love is now,” she said. “Back then I didn’t. Having God in your life for one thing helps guide a marriage along, which I didn’t have at first either.”

Bill said he doesn’t know the secret to marriage, but he does have some good ideas of what it takes to keep a woman happy.

“I know what makes her happy, and I know if she’s happy, my whole family’s happy. If a woman’s happy, you’ve got the battle whooped,” he said.

Bill doesn’t expect the same treatment in return. “Men don’t have to have that stuff,” he said.

As for Valentine’s Day, Lorri doesn’t know of any special plans for the two, but she never knows what Bill has in store.