Tying the Knot
I feel inspired by
crys79 (who never stopped writing) and
shmeen (who recently came back) to write something on this journal.
I've been thinking a lot lately about life. In February, Tim and I decided to get married. It was a surprising decision, perhaps more for me than him. I wrote about weddings and marriage here a while ago. My thoughts are still pretty much the same. I have always enjoyed the idea of a wedding but never thought I really needed a wedding or the commitment of marriage. Tim and I have had many conversations about our future and many about kids but never really talked seriously about getting married. He never seemed that interested and while I told him that I liked the idea of having a wedding someday (for the party) it was fine for me if that was when we were 50 or 60. I was never in a rush. Apparently, Tim has started thinking about us getting married a few months earlier. Slowly his apprehension was evaporating.
It was a lazy Sunday afternoon when Tim was spending some time thinking about his life goals. I was running errands and occasionally checking in with him to have a quick discussion about whether he would like to start his own firm, or whether he really saw himself supporting the Green Party long-term, he was just thinking about the future. He mentioned that he was thinking about relationship goals too and I noticed that he had written down:
Relationship goal: Marriage, summer 2013?
I started laughing and said, did you write “marriage, question mark, 2013?” is there something you want to tell me! He said that if we were going to get married that might be a good time to do it. Which got us talking about it, lightheartedly at first. I told him, and apparently he didn’t know this, that I didn’t like the idea of a surprise engagement and that I found it especially unnecessary because I didn’t want an engagement ring. Once he knew that, the conversation took on a more serious tone. He repeated to me all the reasons why he has been apprehensive about getting married before and then told me that in the last few months he has noticed that he was changing his mind. He told me he wanted to marry me. I told him that I would also like to marry him. Then we both laughed and I said, “does that mean we are engaged!?!” We were.
We kept the news to ourselves for a few days … to see if it stuck, and more importantly to have some of the difficult conversations. We spent a few evenings talking about what marriage means to each of us and discussing (sometimes in great detail) what that commitment would entail. We talked about what the ‘for worse’ in the phrase ‘for better or for worse’ might look like. Of course, no couple knows what amazing and terrible surprises the future holds but we do know things about ourselves. We know that Tim could go blind and that mental illness runs in his family. We know that I will be the primary caregiver for my parents as they get older, and that they live two provinces away. We said things aloud that we never had. We reassured each other.
After a few days, we started telling people. First our parents and siblings, then some close friends. Then other relatives and friends and finally we changed our facebook statuses (what a crazy world where changing a facebook status is part of the engagement story!).
So far, being engaged is lovely, and planning a wedding is complicated. Some moments I don’t even want to think about the wedding, other moments I can’t stop listening to love songs and imagining our first dance.