Love Sinks In... and She Didn't Wear a Wedding Dress!

Miss Bliss writes: this morning when I left for work, it was so hard to untangle from my snuggly cuddly warm sleepy love of my life... it reminded me of when we first got married almost two years ago and how hard it was when one of us left in the morning

we got married in a very simple way, when the tulips were a riot of color in boulder, co... not in the courthouse, but in a building with property records...that had antique file cabinets of deeds in Boulder, and old maps on the walls, scroll maps, etc. We visited on a spring vacation after not having seen each other for fifteen years... and got married 10 weeks later! This all happened at a time when I had cleared space in my life for love, and wanted it to happen when I wasn't looking for it... and it certainly did! Next thing I knew, he was assuring me he "wasn't letting me go."

We got off the elevator, in the Boulder building, holding hands, with his best friend in tow, and the women at the desk said, "Are you here to get married?" I guess they can see you from a mile away there...

We signed the most important paperwork of our lives right there, with a view of the Colorado mountains, two happy childhood friends reunited as adults, knowing each other's histories and ready to launch an amazing future together...

and one year later we had a party in St. Augustine, with family and friends, and said our vows to each other in front of everyone... I thought I had missed out on something by not wearing a wedding dress the day I got married, and wore one for our vow ceremony and reception. But I learned it didn't matter that I hadn't worn a wedding dress the day I got married.

What mattered was that we kissed a lot that day. What mattered was that we were ready to be a family, and we were too in love and had our heads so far up in the clouds, and we didn't mess up that amazing fallen-in-love period with dress shopping or invitation lists or reception details... his friend took lots of great pictures... we were blissfully happy in love, forgetting ice cream on top of the freezer to melt all night, leaving work an hour earlier by accident, spending every waking moment on the phone together that we could, with me in Miami finishing teaching a semester, and him working in Boulder. The minute the semester ended, I had my car packed and was moving to Boulder.

We did things in our own order. We even found my ring, at an antique store, after we got married...

and here we are, with me waking up in his arms, wondering how we have almost reached two years... and feeling like it's only been a year... really we have two anniversaries coming up: the day we got married, and the day of our vow ceremony and reception (5/16 and 5/17).

the first six months I cried a lot... he says now the first three were the hardest, but i was only crying because it was all sinking in: I was being truly loved in a way I never could have imagined possible... by an unbelievably sweet man who I'd spent my childhood with already and who knew me, and where I came from, and how far I'd come... and we were together again, and in charge of the joy now.

Now, the boy I swam in the Delaware water with, away from everything, safe together in the undercurrents, just us in the water, is the man I love, the man who hugs me in the salty ocean water here in Miami...the man I am going to spend the rest of my life with, the two of us just beginning to see and feel all the good life can hold...