The Little Things

In light of Kim Kardashian's divorce, I've heard a surge of comments about weddings. Despite the fact I've never actually seen her show, and know virtually nothing about her life, with my own wedding two weeks after they tied the knot, and our honeymoon to Italy shortly after theirs, I couldn't help but take interest in their recent announcement to split.

I still don't know the details, and to be honest, I don't really care. What I do care about is the fact that this divorce is adding to a long line of other divorces, divorces stemming from the essential problem that some people want to get married more than they want to be married. Some people fantasize so much about the dress, the ring, the cake and the attention, they forget the weight of their promises.

This has always seemed odd to me. For so long, I knew I would never settle. I would never marry someone unless certainty exploded like dynamite in my gut. For that reason, I questioned whether or not I would ever go through with a wedding, and I certainly never fantasized about one. When I met my current husband, I grew certain within a few weeks. Already in my thirties, I dated so many of the wrong guys, I knew when the right one arrived. I might not have been able to articulate exactly what I wanted, but I knew myself well enough to recognize him when he finally came along.

For that reason, my wedding experience was the exact opposite of Kim Kardashian's. My husband, our families and I worked our butts off trying to make our wedding as personal as it could possibly be. Details mattered not because we were trying to impress anyone, but because we wanted to give everyone a special glimpse of who we were, and what was most important to us.

We threw every single wedding tradition onto the table, and we only chose the ones that mattered to us. We didn't want to dress up and become anyone but ourselves, so every part of our wedding bled with who we were. Instead of holding our reception in ballroom like nearly every other wedding we've attended, we decided to have our reception in the winery where we got engaged. Instead of fancy flowers and chair covers, we lined the space with candles, and we converted photos into black and white, placed them in frames and decorated the entire place with pictures of our family and friends. Instead of arbitrarily choosing first dance songs, we picked songs that had significant meaning. Our "first song" was the song my husband played when he proposed, my "father-daughter" song started with a game of catch before we danced to Carly Simon's "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," and being the biggest fans of Neil Diamond I have ever met, the "mother-son" song was "Song Sung Blue."

The only reason why it was sad to see our wedding end was because it was the last time all of those people would ever be together in the same room. We will see some here, and others there, but never again would they all fly to Columbus, Ohio, at the exact same time. As our eyes scanned the room, absorbing every face, every smile, every laugh, we felt overwhelmed with love. Don't get me wrong, part of us did feel sad for the night to end, but a bigger part us felt eager to walk forward--to spend our first night together as husband and wife, to traverse the canals in Venice and stumble down the streets of Florence, to set up our goals and our plans, to rearrange our tiny condo, to dream about a house and kids and a future--and then to actualize those dreams moment by moment.

Though I've enjoyed opening gifts, looking at pictures, watching the video of late night dancing, and recalling funny wedding stories, I haven't felt wistful at all--I'm perfectly happy where I am right now. I'm perfectly happy with all of the little things. I'm perfectly happy having a teammate, a rock and a pillow. I'm perfectly happy in a t-shirt and jeans, giggling over a cheap glass of wine. I don't need the fancy dress, or manicured nails or everyone treating me like a princess; I just need him.