Nursing Buddha

This my last post as an unmarried person.

Why is it that getting married, no matter how home-grown and small and casual you plan it, will still work you into a big ball of nerves before the official hitching takes place? This wedding is important and wonderful and happy and amazing and I still can’t help but look forward to the part of Sunday when all that’s left is changing into loose fitting clothing.

What are we really trying to accomplish with this wedding? Everyone says it’s just about me and The Man, no one else needs to even show up. But if that were true, we’d have just gone to the courthouse and not told anybody. What is this impulse to share, to be public, to be witnessed and recognized? And how that does translate into wanting a certain kind of presentation, to make a spectacle, to have it leave an impression, to make that impression impressive? The farther into a debate of “oh but is this detail delightfully whimsical, or will it come across as painfully classless?” I get, the farther away from my bond to The Man I end up.

So who cares. Who cares if I can’t set a beautiful, well-appointed table. Who cares if I only know how to pick colors as well-matched and sophisticated as a box of crayons. Who cares if I don’t have a single professional-anything involved in this party, except the deli ladies of Publix. Who cares.

Well, I do. And I don’t. And I do. And I don’t. It makes for some messy insides.

The good news: while distracting, at least most of the emotions barely contained beneath the surface of my skin are positive feelings, overwhelming but happy thoughts of really getting married, really being The Man’s wife. I’ve never thought I’d be anyone’s wife–I’ve never had that fantasy, never given it much thought. Oh except for when I was five and insisted I would marry Han Solo, but even then I think I said marry because I didn’t know the word “make-out” because really, who would marry Han Solo?

But even if I had thought seriously about a husband, I wouldn’t have imagined anyone nearly as swell as The Man. I would’ve cheated the corners of his playfulness, not believing someone could be so ready to match me, dork for dork, in hijinx and shenanigans. I would’ve shorted the level of his devotion, unable to imagine someone so full of love, so easy with expressing it. I would’ve faded the definition of his sparkly green eyes, and the perfection of his grin, and how holding hands with him makes me believe him when he says everything is going to be okay. The real Man outdoes any imaginary one.

So I hope everyone likes my homemade wedding. Considering what matters most, I couldn’t be more pleased.