Our Wedding: Getting Ready

It has been almost 3 months since our wedding day and I can still vividly feel all the intense emotions of the day by merely thinking about it. All the nerves, the excitement, the joy that overwhelmed me at the time, oh how I wish I could feel them this fresh forever. But I know they will inevitably and slowly fade over time to turn into a lovely, happy yet mellow memory. And speaking of memories, let me go back to some older ones that led to the creation of our happiest memory yet as a couple.

Funny how life has a way of working things out, huh? Arranging and aligning them so they can turn out for the best, usually surprising us with the most unexpected turn of events. Ours isn’t a love-at-first-sight kind of story, not even close. When I first met my now husband 12 years ago, I didn’t get any kind of warm fuzzy feelings, I didn’t think he was good looking (to be fair, I didn’t think he was bad looking either, I just didn’t even think about his looks at all…but of course now I think he’s the best looking man on the planet!), and I thought he was kind of rude. We were on two completely different life paths, and circumstances were such that I never even considered the possibility of him becoming significant in my life in aaaany way, shape or form.

Fast-forward more than 2 years after we first met, when we first started dating, and I still had no clue that he would be the man I would marry. In fact, it seemed highly unlikely. We had the odds against us, and everyone around us to often remind us.

When you are just a 20 year old kid dating a guy over 20 years your senior, who’s by the way living more than 1,000 miles away, nobody gives you more than a couple months to burn thru that “fling”. Even I wasn’t sure that we could have a future, but as most 20 year olds are, I was only preoccupied with enjoying the moment. I actually remember telling my mom on one of the occasions she was expressing concern about me dating an older guy, “Relax mom, it’s not like I’m gonna marry him…I just like him and wanna see how it goes… what’s the worst that can happen? That I end up heartbroken? Nobody has ever died from that, so I’ll be fine, cry it out for a little bit and then move on. Plus, I rather try than wonder all my life –what if-“. Who would’ve ever known I was indeed going to marry the guy?! Clearly not me!

Then, times goes by, life puts you through better and worse, sickness and health, richer and poorer, and you end up going through it all together, for 9 years, and somehow find yourselves growing deeper in love in the process, until you finally lose the ability to imagine life without your partner…how not to share and celebrate that?! That’s what our wedding was all about, sharing and celebrating our love and commitment, the journey behind us and the one ahead of us.

So yeah, getting there, getting ready took us a while… and I’m sure glad it did!