I started a summer internship (that I was hoping to turn into a full-time job) about six weeks before my wedding day.
When I asked my boss for three days off (you know, to get married and have an abbreviated honeymoon), she squealed. “Yay! Of course you can have those days off!!!! Congratulations!! Weee!!”
I just stared at her.
I was never one of those women who had been planning their wedding since they were a little girl. I always knew I’d get married one day and I did fantasize about my husband – he’d be tall, a great father, supportive. We’d be a power couple. He’d have my back and I’d always have his.
But the actual wedding day? Eh, I guess.
I was excited for the marriage, the beginning of something beautiful. Beyond the white dress and the cake and the dancing and the toasts, our wedding day was about the love that my husband and I shared.
For me to say that our wedding day, six years ago, was the happiest day of my life would do a disservice to all the magical days we’ve had since then and will continue to have in the future. It was a happy day, to be sure, as I was certainly happy to share my love with the world and lock that man down, but I have had numerous days where I thought to myself, “I couldn’t be happier now even if I tried.”
When my husband was hogging our daughter on the day she was born, because he fell so deeply head over heels for the newest lady in his life that I actually had to watch the clock to make sure I got a chance to cuddle her too.
When my daughter came home, beaming the first week at a new school, proud that she took the initiative to sign up for reading club at school all by herself, after struggling the previous school year with selective mutism.
When my four-year-old son got tired of waiting for us to take the training wheels off his bike so he got his dad’s tools out and did it himself, learning how to ride on two wheels that afternoon.
When my husband surprised me with a photo shoot for our five-year anniversary, which made up for the fact that we were too broke and too busy planning for a baby to get engagement photos.
In 2014, we’ll be celebrating seven years of marriage, a decade as a couple. It hasn’t always been easy, but we’ve never wavered from what we pledged to each other that hot, sticky afternoon in early June. I loved him then and I love him even more now.
There is a happiness that washes over you once you’ve been with a person for a significant amount of time. We’re still newbies by some calculations, but we’ve been together for a decade and I have to tell ya, each year gets better.
On my wedding day, I thought I knew what I was pledging. I though I knew what love was and what I would do as a wife. But I didn’t know how we would both grow and change and become focused on building our family. The love we share has grown immensely.
Every single day of my life I feel fortunate and blessed to be where I am.
Every single day.
So sweet