Just in case you have been living under a rock, on April 22, I got married!
I have been planning my wedding since I was a kid. Yes, I was that kind of little girl. If I saw a piece of white fabric, it was immediately a dress, and my friends and I would play wedding. Or princesses. Or princess wedding. I’ve mentioned this tendency to wedding daydream in my previous post about my dress, but I want to shift the focus to another part of my childhood fantasy, the one part that was conspicuously absent. The groom.
In childhood, the groom is usually played either by the least girly girl or the one who lost the inevitable game of rock-paper-scissors. For those of us that have planned our wedding forever, as we grew up, the running joke is “I’ve got everything planned, all I need is the guy!” We have a grand vision with dresses, flowers, and location already chosen but there is an empty silhouette across the altar, labeled “Place Groom Here.”
Going through the actual process of planning a wedding, that empty silhouette feels really strange. The person across the altar is the reason for everything else. He shouldn’t feel tacked on at the last minute, he should be central to the whole event. He’s the part of the wedding that sticks around after the night is over. I loved asking Alex what he wanted for bits of the wedding and taking him with me to consult with vendors and figure out details. He was delighted with bits of the wedding that could be uniquely his, such as the groom’s cake and some special pictures with the groomsmen. I am particularly fond of seeing the people I love get excited, and I found myself deviating from my original vision in small ways just because I knew it would excite him.
As the wedding drew close and I started looking suspiciously for anything that could go wrong, I was always drawn back to the most important piece: my fiance. As long as we are married at the end of the day, the day was an absolute success. Full stop. If the dress rips, the wedding party gets the flu, and a bad storm tears up the venue, are we married at the end of the day? Yes. And that’s the important part.
Having planned my wedding since childhood, I thought I might feel let down now that it’s over. This thing that has been hyped by society and my own wild imagination, this day that is supposed to be one of the biggest memories of my life is now done. Set in stone. This is what my wedding day looks like.
But honestly, I’m surprised at how fulfilled I feel instead. The day was fantastic, a dream, I’ll never forget it. But who did I fall into bed with that night? Alex. And I get to wake up every day knowing that we’re bonded by something greater than ourselves, something we hope to maintain until we leave this Earth. I don’t need another wedding, I want what comes after the wedding (And not just the wedding night activities, get your mind out of the gutter!). I want a life together as something greater than the sum of its parts. I feel like that’s part of how I knew that Alex was the right person for me. I don’t just want something to fill that empty silhouette and get me to my dream wedding. I want him. And look at that, I got him.
Two weeks married and we don’t want to kill each other yet, so I think we’re off to a good start!
