Sentimental Journey

I love those two handsome devils up there. That's Mr. J and Jim, my dear father-in-law. That was snapped on a festive Friday night almost a decade ago when two families came together to celebrate the next day's event.

That's right.

The end of this month marks a big day in Team Wedding Headquarters, and I'm going to spend a little bit of the next few weeks waxing poetic about it. We're coming up on the 10th anniversary of the Wedding Wedding.

Oh, and if you're wondering: "Hmm ... I bet she heard that a lot ..." As in: "Oh! Tee-hee! The Wedding Wedding. Tee-hee!"

Mmmm ... yeah. And we were engaged for 18 months. When, you might ask, did it stop being funny? Probably about day four of week three of month one of that year and a half. When did it stop being sweet?

Never.

I love my name. It makes people smile. It's memorable. It's beautiful. I may always have to spell it for people because they're not sure they heard it correctly, but, it didn't take me long to adopt my husband's lickity-split recitation of: "Wedding. W-E-D-D-I-N-G. Just like you're getting married." I suspect that I get far more of the "Oh! Tee-hee!" remarks these days (or ever) because he's a guy and I'm, well, a girl. And I don't help the matter by being a cheesy girl and after hearing "Oh! What a pretty/beautiful/wonderful/sweet/special name!" (usually from another girl) what do I sometimes reply?

"Yep. I got it at my wedding."

Cheesy. I told you.

And I may have added the name Wedding on October 30, 1999, but that just made things all official — like for taxes and babymaking and ending my streak as the first member of my big ol' Catholic family to be (we say this next part in a whisper) living in sin — I was a Wedding woman (yes, it's an actual designation, and a very exclusive one, at that) long before that candlelit fall evening.

What have we learned since then?

Well, hmmm ... all the legal benefits of marriage are a good idea. Babies raised by us are not. 


And, you might be interested to know that the whole living-together thing became tres chic among my siblings and cousins after I did it. Coincidence? I think not. A trailblazer I am.

But, even though we've always celebrated October 30 — and quite well, I might add — it was just a day that we picked that didn't conflict with the fall college football schedule, and beat the end-of-year deadline (for um, er, taxes ... yeah! that's it! ... not that whole superstitious Y2K thing ... really ... really ... maybe). We've also always celebrated the anniversary of our first date, and honestly, I've always felt much more sentimental about that.

This year, though, is different. Ten years. I'm proud of that. And even as I say that I'm proud of it, it strikes me as a little ridiculous that in the context of "till death do we part," 10 years should seem so monumental. But it is. Especially once you begin to think that "till death" may not be as long as you bargained for when you signed up for this gig.

And — wow — year number 10 has been quite the exclamation point. Everything after this is the bonus round — and I'm gonna play my heart out.