If you wait for the right time, you will wait forever.
It was a quiet ceremony in an empty courtroom, a formalization of feelings already felt and life already lived.
I wore my favorite dress, my go-to messy bun, and no makeup. Today, I married my best friend, and I did it as myself — not as a princess or a model, just me, in all my plainness and beauty.
Isn’t this what marriage is supposed to be?
Two people standing in front of each other, watery eyes, repeating words echoed in the moments they’ve already shared and the moments they long to create?
In sickness and in health.
His worried look the first time he witnessed one of my seizures. I remember thinking if I were dying, that look would keep me alive. No way could I leave him when he was looking at me like that.
For richer or for poorer.
Waiting on checks in the mail, finding side hustles, and giving everything we have to make a business work. The lean times when all we have is each other.
For better or for worse.
I didn’t marry a prince today;
I married a man, a fallible man whose faults I love as much as his strengths. It’s not just that our strengths are compatible, but that our weaknesses are too. We fill in each other’s gaps and lift each other up.
Today, I promised to love all of him.
And he promised to love all of me. Saying the words didn’t give them meaning; building each other back up in the time we’ve grown together is the vow we’ve been making since the day we met.
If you wait for the right time, you will wait forever.
To be honest… I almost did. We needed more time, more money, more planning to have a wedding. The anxiety of who to invite, how to do it, and when and where to have it almost kept me from the most important thing.
Why we do it.
To establish the bonds that have already formed, to make them valid in the eyes of the world.
To have.
And to hold.
But today, we stopped postponing forever in the pursuit of perfection and celebrated the vulnerability of love in all its grit and reality.
We couldn’t be more different people, but we are unified in love, in purpose, in spirit — and finally, in law.
To my husband: I love you.
Thank you for reminding me of my abilities and my value. Thank you for your patience and your loyalty. I can’t promise to be a perfect wife, but I can promise to love you perfectly — with my whole heart and the breadth of my soul.
You are mine, and I am yours.
For always.
