A Happy Day (or at least it should have been)

Five years ago I married my best friend. When I read other bloggers' posts about their anniversary they typically go on and on about how wonderful that day was, how it was the best of their life, how if they could they would relive that day over and over. Yeah, not me. It isn't that anything particularly bad happened that day, everything went as planned, it was more that I was bitter about the whole thing in the first place and I let that ruin the day for me and my husband.

The resentment started early; with a proposal that, in my opinion, was a year later than it should have been. By the time he asked, I was ready to run down to the courthouse the next day. I had never been one to want a huge wedding. In fact, anytime I thought about getting married I always pictured a ceremony at a courthouse, just me, my future husband and a couple of witnesses. But my husband had other plans. He insisted on a church wedding and truthfully it pissed me off. This is MY day, not his. No one cares about what he wants. Weddings should be about the bride and damn it, I want to get married in a courthouse! But, I decided to go with it, as he insisted his family would be upset if we didn't do it this way (and imagine how mad I was later when I realized this wasn't at all true!).

So, I planned his wedding. He wanted royal blue for a wedding color. I tried to insist that that wasn't the best color for a wedding, and shouldn't I get to choose the colors?! He won. We made arrangements based on needing it to be as cheap as possible, which didn't always make him happy and I happily reminded him that we didn't need to get married this way. I made sure he knew every step of the way how miserable I was. How much time this wedding was taking me to plan, a wedding I didn't want. I begged several times that we just skip this nonsense and go get married at the courthouse, but he never faltered.

On September 16, 2006 we got married. I was four months pregnant at the time (don't know why I thought it was a good idea to get pregnant BEFORE the wedding) and even though my dress miraculously still fit, I felt like it was suffocating me. We stupidly chose the day of the Iowa vs. Iowa State game (anyone who lives in Iowa knows that this was a very stupid mistake) and we had a terrible time rounding up groomsmen for pictures and some grumbles about missing plays (or at least this is how I remember it). But even with those little things, the day went as planned without any major hitches and yet I made sure I was miserable and did my best to make Matt as miserable as possible too (luckily I didn't succeed though as he still remembers this day as a happy one).

So, that is how I felt about our wedding five years ago and even a couple of years after that (and possibly yesterday). Now that it has been five years, I regret being such a bitch. I wish I would have realized back then that it didn't matter where we got married or how we got married, what mattered is the commitment that we were making to each other. Five years later, he still makes me laugh uncontrollably on a daily basis, he has never broken my trust, and he balances out my craziness in a way that no one else has.

So, to sum it up, Happy Anniversary Matt! Even though I didn't see it back then, it really was one of the best days of my life!