Sorry for my absence, I was busy getting married

Open for wedding photos

Hi, hi. It’s been a minute!

I’ve been calling the last few months a “busy season” of my life, consisting of many changes and developments in all aspects of my life, but the biggest one was, undoubtedly, getting married this last weekend.

All of these things made me both very stressed and very grateful for my life.

For the last week, I’d been getting 3 to 4 hours of sleep every night and I had (have) new dark circles hanging under my eyes. At our rehearsal dinner, friends and family kept asking me how I felt. I said I was very tired. Then I laughed to show that I was good-natured about this and the person laughed with me too.

I’d been on the fence for a long time about having a wedding: they’re expensive and time-consuming and in general, I’m pretty private about my relationship with my husband (!!!). I have big feelings about the institution of marriage and patriarchal expectations put onto women related to marriage. I knew I would never change my last name.

But I also knew this would most likely be the only opportunity I’d have to bring all of my family and friends together in the same room. So I spent nearly a year and half planning a wedding, and the time flew by as it always does, and I’ll confirm that having all the people you love surrounding you is one of the best feelings in the world.

They all showed up for us— so many of them had to fly in from across the country (and even a few family members from across the world) just to be here with us for our day. A friend drove for nearly 5 hours in her car with a broken AC in a 92-degree heat wave. Another friend missed a few days of their family vacation in Greece. My in-laws flew in early to help pick up people from the airport and run last minute errands to Costco. It felt so natural to bring all of these different people from our lives together in the same place, watch them getting along and laughing together. It felt like they all knew each other, as if all of us had been friends forever, and that was maybe the best part of it.

I kept hugging all of them and saying things like Thank you so much for being here, it means a lot because I couldn’t adequately communicate the deep gratitude that filled me, how warm I felt surrounded by them. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt gratitude and love like that, honestly. I’m still struggling to put it into words.

And then, of course, my husband. I think he’s the most magnificent, patient, kind, loyal, loving person in the world. I always knew he was my husband from the very beginning, 7 years ago. I had a moment of clairvoyance, really, when we were at an ugly sweater Christmas party. I looked over at him with his friends and I quite literally saw it: a supercut of our lives together, filled with moments like moving in together for the first time and cooking in our kitchen. In a field of grass, laughing. And somewhere in the middle, I saw our wedding day. An aerial view of us at the altar.

This is a very ridiculous thing to tell people when they asked how I knew my husband was my husband. But it’s true. I saw it all from the very beginning.

So when I walked down the aisle to him, I wasn’t nervous. The sun beamed on me and the sticky humidity was another layer of skin and a bead of sweat dripped down my spine. My husband and I held hands at the altar, his forehead damp and cheeks flushed because he was forced to wear a three-piece suit during a national heatwave. His boutonniere came undone and we laughed while I pinned it back to his lapel. We exchanged vows and the rest of the world faded out and everything was fuzzy and white and warm and I felt a deep sense of calm and clearness wash over me.

I love my husband and our families and our friends. I’m so, so thankful.