Dear Team Practical,
This is it. On Monday we’ll be on a brand new site, and tomorrow I’ll be down in L.A. quietly toiling away on the last of it. It feels big, way bigger than I expected. And scary. WAY WAY scarier than I expected. And exhausting. Seriously. I’m so tired.
So. Can I get slightly sentimental on this last day on this site that I’ve been pouring my soul into for the last two years? (It’s true. I missed APW’s second birthday this week). Ok. Thanks. I’ll let you get sentimental one day too.
First I felt like I *needed* to share this email with you all, becuase it’s about you as much as it’s about me. It was also sort of amazing to receive, because this is why I read blogs. This is what blogs were to me when I was 22 and bewildered:
I’ve been a lurking reader of A Practical Wedding since this past October. I’m not planning a wedding, nor am I even close to doing so; I just stumbled across your blog (I think I was googling city hall weddings during a random conversation with a friend about easy weddings) and haven’t left. I am 23; since most of Team Practical is (as I recall from the survey) late-20s and 30s age-wise, I enjoy getting a glimpse of the lives of women who are a few years down the road from me, but seem light years away in terms of where they are in their lives. I just wanted to offer a thank you, from a reader reading for perhaps unconventional reasons. Y’all have become sort of mentors-from-afar–it’s illuminating (not to mention empowering) to be in on the conversations of incredible, smart women thoughtfully and sanely dealing with the big issues of their lives. You’re not just bride-to-bes, but women living your lives who happen to be planning a wedding and gearing up to be married, and it’s the how-you’re-living-your-lives aspect, your priorities and choices (in which wedding planning plays only part), that are interesting to me as a younger’un.
And thank you is exactly what I wanted to say to all of you. Exactly.
And finally, on our last posting day here on this scrappy-trusty-site, I’m leaving you with this snippet of Dar Williams. I’m normally not a huge Dar Williams girl, but I heard this song right before our wedding and I just stopped. Stopped because this is what this blog has been for me, and continues to be, as I find my way down the road of wife. So, for you this song:
Why is it that as we grow older and stronger
The road signs point us adrift and make us afraid
Saying ‘You never can win,’ ‘Watch your back,’ ‘Where’s your husband?’
Oh I don’t like the signs that the signmakers made.
So I’m going to steal out with my paint and brushes
I’ll change the directions, I’ll hit every street
It’s the Tinseltown scandal, the Robin Hood vandal
She goes out and steals the King’s English
And in the morning you wake up and the signs point to you
They say ‘I’m so glad that you finally made it here,’
‘You thought nobody cared, but I did, I could tell,’
And ‘This is your year,’ and ‘It always starts here,’
And oh-oh oh-oh-oh oh-oh, ‘You’re aging well.’
Thank you. All. Thank you for the sign changing. Thank you for all of it.
I’ll see you on the other side.*
Love,
Meg
*Which should be sometime Sunday night
Photo: One you haven’t seen, right after we got married, by One Love Photo, of course
