Getting Married & the Walk of Life

After a long, 18-month engagement, my fiancee and I will officially tie the knot next Friday night.  It struck me earlier today that though the words are cliche, time does fly, and this has been a significant amount of one's adult life to pass.  Since March of last year, we've searched for and purchased our first house, attended many weddings in the honor of other people, watched as a bunch of the couples on our original wedding guest list broke up, and mourned as two of the people on our original wedding guest list died.  But we're still here, strong as ever, and barring the Zombie Apocalypse happening over the next ten days (a distinct possibility), we'll be husband and wife at that point.

This blog post isn't intended to be a love note (though some will see it that way).  It's a reflection on my life, happy and secure as it is right now.  All of the things I'll write about are subject to change, and certainly could change, because shit in this world is always in flux and the disorder of the universe is always increasing.  As of the moment I write these words, though, these are just my thoughts; just what I was feeling at the time.

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Until it actually happens, a wedding is a living organism, or a third partner in a relationship (pick whichever metaphor you'd prefer, as they are equally valid).  It's a massive project and, no matter what, it takes up a great deal of a couple's time.  Weddings vary in cost, theme, formality, and structure.  Irrespective of these variables, a wedding (short of an elopement) is universally a giant time-suck.

The Great Scorer, or any skilled independent observer, can, I think, learn a great deal about a couple from how they plan their wedding.  Relationships are extraordinarily complex things, and no one quite understands how they work.  (If people did, well, more relationships would work.)  My best guess, having been alive for some number of years and having fallen on my face a few times in the process, leads me to conclude that success in a relationship differs as a function of two people being capable of working together to (a) achieve new goals and (b) not piss off the other person too strongly or irrevocably. As a result, in wedding planning, I always strove to be a partner to my fiancee, to realize that although she always had the pure vision for making the wedding happen, that I could be there for advice, or to assist, or to help negotiate with vendors.  I hope that I accomplished all of these things (because she's been incredible at everything that she's been working on), and I can only hope that next Friday is as awesome as I've made it in my mind.

And yes, I'm sure that I still pissed her off sometimes in the process - though not too strongly, I hope.

But many people get married, and perhaps (here I'm being a bit smug, but I feel I deserve to be smug) not all of these people have thought about this so deeply.  Planning a wedding can be as detailed as two people want it to be; if I were to recount any of the countless minutia that we've debated (sometimes for too long) related to any number of ridiculous wedding topics, I think my head would spin.  Selective amnesia is a good thing.  And yes, I hope our guests will understand the gimmick we've chosen for the table numbers.

My theory is that it's entirely possible to predict whether a marriage will last as a result of how two people plan a wedding.  Project management doesn't end when two people get married - as but two examples, most couples choose to share finances after getting married, and that can be a huge source of marital stress.  Most couples also choose to have kids, and I can only imagine how much stress that can cause.

To be realistic, I know that as our shared life proceeds past September 23, 2011, the stresses will increase and perhaps even compound.  It's an inevitable fact of being a couple of dumb yuppies.  We plan to purchase a dog as our wedding gift to each other, and even though owning a pet has been clinically shown to reduce blood pressure, I'm already sort of dreading the impacts this may have on our social lives.  There's a fairly decent chance we'll decide to have children (one day), and they'll need food and diapers and college savings and shit.  One year we may decide to finish our basement, or install a pool - that'll be more work.  We'll need to plan family vacations.  Our parents will get older.  And it's reasonable, given all that I just mentioned, to ask what the hell it all means.

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Below is a numerical breakdown of the wedding:

• Six hours in duration, from invite time to last dance
• Seven vendors working for us that night (each of them better show up on time!)
• Twelve members of bridal party
• Three "parental units" (as my parents are divorced)
• One honeymoon that we haven't planned or booked yet because planning vacations is one thing we both suck at
• One hundred and twenty one things to remember that day (from item #1: "make sure to wake up on time" to item #121: "make sure to get laid")
• And finally, Five hundred and forty three days of engagement.

Oh, I forgot one number.  Four.  Last night, we received an E-mail from our maitre'd from the wedding venue, which included a four-page document that detailed every minute aspect of our wedding day.  It was remarkably thorough and accurate (we really dig our venue), and also disheartening to see because it became incredibly clear that once the wedding starts, it'll proceed as directed on these four pages of paper.  It'll end soon thereafter, and all of our work will be finished.  It'll be sad to see the whole project go.  It's hard to imagine what might take its place.

But on the other hand, that's just the clear sign of a new beginning, right?  While I'm occasionally an incredibly negative person, I'm also generally fairly optimistic about the future, and I'm confident that as involved and... shit, yeah, I'll say it, fun... as this whole getting married process has been, we'll find new and interesting things to occupy ourselves. 

It'll be nice to go on hikes together on the weekends this fall, instead of spending them semi-exhausted, checking items off of a wedding to-do list.  I may even run a marathon in 2012, who knows.  No matter what the next step is, I'm sure it'll be an interesting one.  Because when life stops being interesting, it's a serious issue, and it's something I'd do anything to avoid.