Oh, you didn’t seriously think that I wasn’t going to write on our anniversary did you? You didn’t think I’d let a little thing like vacation get in my way? Which is to say, buongiorno from Rome.
Last year on one of the first days of our honeymoon I totally had a meltdown. I was jet-lagged and overwhelmed (which is always enough to make me cry, as I proved again this week), and was emotionally exhausted. And when David finally got me to break through my sobbing into words, I said the real thing that was on my mind. It was, “Everyday the wedding is getting further away, and I’m afraid I’ll forget how it felt.”
So now, a year later, what I have to say to my weepy self is: one – it’s ok to cry, and two – you’ll never forget how it felt.
On our one year anniversary, I expected to look back at our wedding day and wish I was there. I expected to feel exactly how I felt on that jet-lagged afternoon in London, when I sobbed that it was moving so far away from that day. But I don’t. Not really. I’ve been looking back at the pictures this week, and they make me remember. I remember how the morning felt, how the vows felt, how the party felt, how those blissful days after felt. But looking back, it feels like this wonderful moment in time.
But I don’t miss it. I don’t wish I was there. Now, looking back the wedding it feels like a beginning. The picture of us cutting the cake feels like all wedding pictures do… like this iconic moment, this birth of a family. It really does feel like it was the end of something good and the beginning of something great. It feels like the place that we started, after making enormous vows.
This week David and I have been discussing the last year. It’s been enormous and exhausting, but also rich and wonderful. David finished law school, graduated one last time, took the bar. I switched jobs, re-launched APW, and decided to take my work and writing here a little more seriously. I’m tired, David’s tired. And trust me, it hasn’t always been easy. But it’s been a really happy year.
I don’t want to get married again… ever. I want to be here. Adventuring. Figuring out what we want our lives to be. This week that meant discovering the Mediterranean, grinning back and forth with Italian babies, cursing the August heat of Rome, and thinking about what’s next.
Another wedding? God no. We have the pictures, and the memories. And now we have life to live. And I’ll take that every single time.
And PS – If I was going to give you my Wedding Graduate A Year After perspective, it would be this: we couldn’t have screwed it up if we tried, because it was one shining moment in the sun. But hot-damn, I’m glad I stuck to my guns and found a dress I loved (since I knew it mattered to me), and I’ll be forever grateful to have our pictures. But even without that stuff? We couldn’t have screwed it up. I promise.
First photo: Our wedding day, One Love Photo; Second Photo: Us in front of the blue, blue, Mediterranean this week, as taken by my iPhone. I’m afraid it was the best I could do, picture-wise on the road. (And yesssss… I know I’m wearing the same shirt as I am in the bio picture. That is *not* in purpose.)
