Remembering

This weekend my husband and I celebrated our 1-year anniversary. To celebrate, we turned off the phones, cancelled all our normal weekend madness, and spent time together. It was lovely.

We also got the pleasure of watching our wedding video for the first time (our best man owns a videography company, and gave us our wedding video as a wedding present...because he's a friend, though, we were patient enough to wait for a whole year before getting to see it).

As we watched ourselves move up the aisle, promise to God and to each other that we would always love each other, saw our family and friends who gathered there to support us, and heard our speeches all over again, I realized something: we had the loveliest wedding ever.

No, we didn't spend $80/person on the reception, like a dear friend of ours is for his wedding this summer. No, we didn't have a wedding planner to feed the best man his speech. No, my dress didn't cost me thousands of dollars. No, we didn't go on a tropical and exotic honeymoon. And no, we didn't eat the finest foods that are hard to pronounce, and even harder to eat properly.

But we did love each other. And we loved and knew every guest that was invited. And we were able to firmly say, that the best part of our wedding was free - the vows, and God, and us, and our family. And the rest, like the lovely flower arrangements, done for free by women who love us, and the hall decorations, lovingly looked after by our wedding party and their significant others, and the food, which was so delicious and, as most claimed, the best "wedding" food ever eaten, and provided at an incredible price by dear, dear friends of ours...well, all of that was just icing on a perfectly constructed cake.

I wouldn't take any of my wedding back. I wouldn't change a single thing. And now as we start thinking about a house and about having children, I know that the rest of our lives will be just like that. All of the good things, all of the best things, all of the things we can not live without, will all be free. And all of the other things that come our way will be the icing on an already perfect cake.

Happy anniversary to my husband, to our marriage. And a toast, for many years to come and many more moments to enjoy and savour.

Cheers!

You know it's real when...

...your husband IMs you, saying:

"Pleasant thought of the day: you are currently sitting in the coffe shop where i asked your parents if i could marry you."

Swoon, all over again.

To invite or not to invite

When I was four years old my uncle sexually assaulted me. It wasn't rape and it wasn't invasive, but it was hurtful and confusing - mostly on the basis of lost trust and relationship with my uncle, and a weakened trust in men (mostly because of my dad's response (or lack thereof) to the event, which involved his brother).

Now my wedding is coming, and the question is, do we invite him? The man that still makes my stomach squirm and my skin crawl. The man who hurt me.

The man who made a mistake.

Should I be considering the event as the above - merely a mistake? Something that after almost twenty years I should be able to forget about?

My grandparents (his parents) don't understand why I wouldn't want him at my wedding, and although his name wasn't on the invitation we sent them, they still included his name on the reply card. My father says that he probably won't come, or if he does, he won't stay, so what's all the fuss?

And my fiance...my gorgeous fiance, says it's up to me, but we had already discussed it and we had decided that he's not coming.

And my mom? She says she'll take on my grandmother at any point. Just tell her when.

So what do I do?

Do I invite him, deal with him minimally, and ignore the fact that he is there?

Or not invite him, forever wonder about the hurt I'm causing him, and have to deal with my grandmother's confused, hurt face for the whole day?

I wish someone would just tell me what to do. This whole being an adult thing really sucks somedays.

Regret

Wedding invitations are a study in quantifying your relationships. All of a sudden you need to either come up with or pare down to a specific number of loved ones that you want to share your day with. And this is no easy feat.

There are those that are in your life today. You talk to them, love them, go out with them, see them, live with them, share your life with them - current best friends, university friends, church members, family friends. And you plan on continuing these relationships for an interminable time to come - therefore, they are invited.

Then there are those who you know you should invite - relatives from afar, people you might have met once or never in your life time that your parents insist must come, people who helped you become who you are, your boss (maybe), your eighth cousin. You don't see these people regularly, but you know that if you don't invite them, you will never hear the end of it. EVER. So, these people are invited.

Then there are those from your past lives. For me, this was looking at elementary school and high school friends, searching my heart for teachers and church members that watched me grow, people I loved and cherished in my more youthful days (I know I'm only 23, but there are a lot of people in my past!). And these people are fondly invited.

Then there are the relateds. I know that's not a real word, but as an English major, I'm taking the liberty of meeting my quota for made up words. The relateds are a group of people that are related to the people above. People you are inviting because the aforementioned people are invited - present love interests/partners/live-ins/fiances/fiancees/husbands/randoms. You don't know these people, but they come with the people you want to invite, and therefore your guest list has just doubled. Terrific. Fine. They are also invited.

And then there is the least desireable list - the list of people you aren't speaking to right this moment, but have a feeling if you don't include them in your day, then you will regret it, painfully, in the future. And I don't mean that they will hunt you down, tie you up, and demand why they weren't invited. I mean, when you become reconciled in the future, and you realize that your petty fight (which it usually turns out to be) prevented them from sharing your day with you, and all you can think about is how awful their absence was. That's the regret I'm talking about.

We have one such person on our guest list, and interestingly enough it is not my undesireable or my fiance's undesireable. It's my mother's.

She has been feuding with one of my uncles, and has declared that he shall not be invited. That if I do invite him, he will ruin my day by getting drunk and being an awful guest.

But I have to think...

In the future, when everyone is more old and grey, and my mother is speaking to her brother again, and we are attending his children's weddings...what will the regret feel like?

That's why I have invitations filled out and ready to send to my uncle, and his children, my cousins, just in case.

Just in case my mother realizes that she will sorely miss him when albums are pulled out, and cooed over, and his absence, instead of his drunken prescence, is the focus.

Just in case.