So I got married - The months before.

Last fall Jack and I started talking about possibly getting married. We had just gotten through a very difficult phase in our relationship, and the fact that we'd found a way to work through it was very reassuring to me. It's not the first time we've had a rough phase, but it was probably the roughest one yet. I actually think working through challenges makes me feel much more confident in the relationship than if we hadn't had any challenging times to begin with.

Between that earned confidence, our age, and our desire to ultimately have kids, I finally got to the point where I thought, "Are we going to do this or not?" Jack told me years ago that he'd marry me if I would let him, but that he'd stay by my side unmarried if that's what I needed to do. (Some have said that was a horrible attempt at a proposal, but I found it very romantic and selfless. And for those who really know me, they'll recognize it was probably the best thing he could have said.) In any case, it wasn't his resolve we were waiting on, clearly, but mine. And I finally got to the point where I thought I ought to just make decision.

We began talking about it, pretty tentatively at first. Then somehow the conversations evolved from "Should we do this?" to "If we did this, how would we do it?" We drew up a rough list of who we'd want to attend and it was quickly obvious any party would need to be in MO, as such a large proportion of our loved ones live there.

However, Jack and I are both nonreligious, and (unlike in California) MO only lets justices of the peace or people affiliated with religious institutions perform marriages. Additionally, we wouldn't be able to have the wedding until at least the summertime, but I didn't want to move our April anniversary. I very much wanted this wedding to be a way to formalize the relationship we already have, and not to be a way to say the last 5 years have only been a prelude to some "real" relationship. In that light I didn't want to change our anniversary. Next year I won't see us as having been together one year, but six.

So we decided to have a very simple legal ceremony as close to our original anniversary as possible. Our anniversary is April 13th--a Sunday this year--and the clerk's office isn't open on Sundays, so we scheduled an appointment for first thing Monday morning.

I really liked the idea of having a quiet, small, secret wedding. It took all the pressure of a Big Wedding Build Up off. It also made the wedding very much something between Jack and me, instead of us and everyone we know. It felt very intimate.

Originally we weren't even going to have any witnesses, and just pay extra for a court-appointed witness. However, through unrelated circumstances, Jack's brother Dave (whom Jack already planned to ask to be Best Man for our bigger party) was planning to visit Jack soon, and Jack's spring break would be the ideal time. And Jack's spring break is this week. So we decided to have Dave along to be a witness, and if Jack's Best Man is going to be there than I want my Maid of Honor there as well. Sooo over Christmas we each told our respective "best's" about our plans, and made sure they could be there for the big day. I wasn't there when Jack told Dave, but Jack said Dave was very happy about it. When I told Ellen she cheered, and I actually almost teared up. It was very sweet. And they've been great secret keepers ever since.

Because of the way I am about marriage, I thought between Christmas and our wedding date (yesterday) I would panic at some point, and feel very nervous and uncertain and skittish about going through with it.

To my very pleasant surprise, at no point did I panic. The closer we got to the day, the more excited I felt. Last week I felt anxiously excited and happy pretty much every day thinking about how soon we would be married.

April 7, 2014 text messages:
Me: You only have a week left of being unmarried. How does that feel?
Jack: Like prison! See ya!
Me: Lol

We were apart a lot these last two weeks because I was doing work in San Francisco and he has to work where we live, but it gave me a chance to think a lot about our relationship and all the aspects of him that I admire. It also gave me a chance to listen to romantic music, which I don't normally do around anyone else, and feel so much affection and happiness over our decision.

There was one point about a week out when I felt a little nervous. I started to think of things in terms of "the rest of my life" (e.g. "He's going to do XYZ pet peeve the rest of my life?") But I talked to him about it, and about why we make such a great match and what this marriage does and doesn't mean for us, and I was pretty much immediately reassured. Outside of those couple hours of slight nervousness, I've felt great the whole time, all the way up to and after the moment we said our vows.

Spring day date - less than two weeks until we'd be married!