It’s My Anniversary Today, and I Don’t Know How to Feel

Love, loss, and frustration: the story of how my wife and I got married.

It’s my anniversary today. Well, not today today. By the time you read this, it will be long past. I’m trying to not pinpoint it too much, because as much as I enjoy sharing things about my life here, my partner is a fairly private person, and I’d rather not upset her by revealing too much.

Either way, I’m really not sure how to feel about today. We’ve been married for a few years now, though we’ve been together as a couple for much longer. The circumstances of our wedding, however, are such a mixed bag that I simply don’t know how to feel about it.

I proposed to my partner in the spring at our local botanical garden, particularly in the Japanese garden section, as Japanese culture holds a special place in both of our hearts. It almost didn’t happen; she’d been in a lot of chronic pain the past several days leading up to it, and woke up in quite a lot of pain that day as well. I had taken the day off specifically so we could go to the garden that day, and I was worried that my plan would fall through.

That said, she felt better enough that we were able to go in the early afternoon, with the caveat that we might have to pull the plug at any time if she was in too much pain. We started in the gift shop, as it was close to the entrance and would give an early indicator of whether we could actually make it to the garden or not.

She was still a bit grumpy while browsing the various stuff, but her spirits were lightened dramatically by a chance encounter with a group of teenagers and a guy in a cloak. The teenagers were acting like stereotypical snarky teenagers do, and the guy in the cloak just stood out so much that his mere presence was amusing.

At first, we didn’t think that they were related; we kept hearing the teenagers making jokes about random stuff, and we shared snarky retorts to their jokes and laughed quietly about how funny the group was. Then, seemingly from nowhere, the cloaked man approached the group. Apparently, he was their chaperone; as he approached, he asked them “Who wants to go to Taco Bell?” A cheer went up through the group, and they excitedly shuffled toward the door.

This turn of events caused both of us to crack up laughing, which helped my partner feel better about things. We decided that a walk around the garden was going to be manageable. I moved us quickly to the Japanese garden, just in case.

As we approached the place where I planned to propose, I was anxious but sure of my decision. We approached the destination — the plum viewing arbor, a bit off the main trail — just as a group of people was leaving it. I led her inside, we admired the view of the plum trees and the lake, and as she turned to look at me, I dropped to one knee and proposed.

Imagine my surprise when she immediately said yes.

Surprise is the appropriate term here. My partner has a particularly dim view of marriage, having witnessed her mother’s marriage to her biological father fall apart spectacularly, with her receiving the brunt of the fallout. By and large, the various marriages she has been directly exposed to have been…less than ideal.

Bearing this in mind, I had gone into this proposal expecting the best-case scenario to be her responding with “I have to think about it.” I had not mentally prepared myself for an immediate yes. Still, I soldiered on, putting the ring on her finger, kissing her hand, and rising to give her a hug and a kiss. We then sat awkwardly in the plum arbor for about 20 minutes, her unable to look at me due to sheer emotions.

The wedding was going to be more or less traditional fare. We booked a banquet center with a standard sit-down dinner, planning to do the ceremony and reception in one place to save money and trouble. Our guest list was small — I hadn’t planned on inviting much of my family, just my parents, sister, and a handful of the aunts, uncles, and cousins I actually liked, along with a small group of close friends.

We planned to dress in Victorian-style clothes, particularly the early 1870s bustle era. This is another hobby of ours — historical dress and styles — and we started researching the particular styles for our respective outfits.

My parents, being more traditional types, started weaseling in on our plans. My father asked if they had to dress in the historical style, and was relieved when I said no. His tone had a bit of derisiveness to it, as though he thought the idea was dumb. He also insisted that we invite the whole family, and offered to pay for their plates as recompense. I didn’t care for that idea, but my father is the pushy sort, so I didn’t feel like I could refuse. He offered no other financial assistance for us — we were to do the rest on our own.

This was fine by me — I am a budget-driven person, so I was planning on how to save for everything — but his insistence on dictating many of the details while offering no financial assistance to support his decisions for my wedding rubbed me the wrong way. My partner especially didn’t care for it. She had long ago understood that my parents didn’t like her, and felt like their attempts to make decisions for our wedding was just another example of them pushing her out of her own relationship.

Of course, all of this went directly to hell within about nine months. My future mother-in-law had an issue arise with her house that fall, which I valiantly offered to help with. Unfortunately, as these things do, it snowballed into a massive financial drain due to several unforeseen circumstances beyond any of our control.

By the following spring, I had sunk all of my spare funds into saving her house and ensuring that she had a place to live. She wound up securely in a new residence that was fully paid off. I wound up bankrupt and with a tax bill for a 401(k) loan I couldn’t pay back. Needless to say, the wedding was not going forward as planned.

On top of all of this, I had just gone through the process of being disowned by my father and separating from my parents and family. At the time, I felt like I had nobody to turn to for help, and life was miserable. I had no money, no family, and my wedding was ruined. For the first time in a long time, I had some strong thoughts of suicide.

The suggestion that we get married in a particularly hot part of the summer when my partner and I are both cold-weather people was mine. It was a few months after everything settled down, and my partner’s sister was coming into town in a month. So, I suggested we get married while she was in town to save trouble.

There was a lot of paranoia that went into my suggestion. Having been recently disowned by my parents, I was becoming increasingly worried that something would happen to me, and not being legally married, they would come after my belongings and leave my partner destitute. There were also the tax considerations, which would help us recoup some of our losses, and insurance would be cheaper if I could put her on my work plan.

Needless to say, all of this is about as unromantic as possible. To top it all off, we didn’t have the money for anything even remotely fancy. I arranged for us to have the patio of a coffee shop that we particularly enjoy, which they offered for free since we agreed to let them do their standard business while we were there.

We began telling our friends about the wedding, excited that they could share our day with us. The first friends we told, a couple that had been friends for a long time, were excited for us at first, then realized that the date clashed with an out-of-town festival that they’d bought tickets for. They wound up deciding to not attend our wedding to go to the festival. We told them that it was fine.

Another couple said something similar — they had bought tickets to the same festival and wouldn’t be able to make it. The wife of the couple was pregnant and wound up not going, but she also didn’t make it to the wedding because it was a hot day and she was worried about the health of the baby.

So, we got married on one of the hottest days of the year on the patio of a coffee shop. Our veteran friend conducted the ceremony, which was beautiful, and we all retreated into the shop proper to eat and cool off.

Ultimately, it was nice, but not anything that we wanted. Two of the four couples that we considered part of our core friend group weren’t there. We were hot and sweaty the whole time, and our “reception” meal was pub fare. There was no historical costuming — my partner’s wedding dress was a black lace number that she had picked up for under $100.

The friend who volunteered to take the photos had to admit to us later that the memory card that had them was corrupted and they were all lost. The only memento we have of our wedding is a framed picture that a friend took with her cell phone, printed, and framed for us.

All of this was tinged with a lot of bittersweet feelings around family, money, and just the unfairness of life in general. My partner, who had lobbied me to not do a courthouse wedding, wasn’t thrilled with a wedding that was, ultimately, a step up from a courthouse wedding. She also wasn’t thrilled with the various practical reasons that I used to push her into getting married the way we did. Not having several friends there because of an out-of-town festival made things even worse.

So, all told, she wasn’t particularly happy with the event itself. As she has told me, she’s happy that we’re married, but she wasn’t happy with the wedding. As happy as I am that she’s my wife, at this point, I’m inclined to agree.

We did the best with what we had, but what we had wasn’t a lot, and many things conspired against us. Several friends didn’t attend, nothing was what we really wanted, and it was hot as hell. Aside from the ceremony, which I think was beautiful (and blessedly short — neither of us wanted a long ceremony), it was a very bittersweet day.

At this point, it’s been a few years now, and a lot of the bitter feelings have worn down. We are happily married, and our relationship is strong. We talk to each other, we enjoy each other’s company, and we are generally happy together.

Still, the specter of our wedding feels a bit strange when it rolls around every year. I don’t regret the wedding itself as much as I regret the circumstances around it. So many things went wrong in the year leading up to it that the whole thing just felt like a disappointing topper to a crap cake.

That said, some good things came from it. My former coworkers from the job that I had recently left threw me and my partner a party at a nice restaurant not long after the ceremony, and it felt incredibly nice to be celebrated by people close to me. My partner in particular was incredibly touched by it, as it was the most special she’d felt about the whole thing up to that point. The fact that a bunch of people that she didn’t really know put so much effort into celebrating her and me was an incredibly sweet gesture, and she still speaks fondly of it.

We made sort-of plans to have a “proper” ceremony at a later point, which was why we had initially been okay with our friends not attending. However, I am the type to over-promise, and my partner was not counting on us actually having that ceremony. I desperately want to, I really do, but life has tended to get in the way for one reason or another, and work is so stressful that I don’t know when I’ll have time to work on it.

That’s incredibly frustrating for me, as I want my partner to be happy with a wedding that she wants, but my general procrastination combined with my stress levels generally get in the way of my doing anything productive on it. I want us to have a wedding that we can enjoy properly, I just don’t know how to go about it.

My partner, for her part, has more or less made her peace with it. I hate that she has to settle for something that she didn’t care for, and I desperately want to find a way to do better. I’m trying, I promise.

So, as we reach and pass another anniversary, I sit here typing this, my partner asleep upstairs (probably), reflecting on the past several years of marriage and the years of relationship leading up to that. Our relationship has been wracked with turmoil and trouble, much of it from sources outside of our control. That said, we’ve had our own internal troubles, and I have a lot of responsibility for many, many things that have gone wrong.

Our wedding was kind of emblematic of those troubles — a confluence of things that we didn’t want, shared trauma, and compromises that we were forced to make. Nothing went the way we wanted it to go.

That said, I do not regret marrying my partner, nor do I regret anything leading up to it. I spent all my money saving my mother-in-law’s housing situation, and I’d do it again. I wound up disowned and estranged from my parents, and while my partner blames herself for how it happened, I know damn well it was going to happen regardless of her influence. Honestly, I’m happy it happened sooner than later, as I think I would’ve hated torturing myself with many more years of family gatherings.

Most importantly, I love my partner so madly, deeply, truly. She is, without a doubt, the love of my life, and I am happy we are together. I want to make that incredibly clear — as much time as I just spent talking about the circumstances of our wedding and marriage, I am 100% committed to her and our relationship. I love her so much, and nothing, not a shitty wedding, not near-bankruptcy, not being disowned, will stop that.

I continue working every day, trying my best to love her as much as possible, doing my part of the work in the relationship. I continue to talk to her, to be honest with her, to listen to her as best I can (even though I’m bad at it sometimes). I work with her on the issues that come up, and she works with me to make our marriage strong.

Ultimately, the wedding, for all of its failings, isn’t a representation of our marriage. We have worked hard to get to this point, and it is through regular, open communication that our relationship is as strong as it is. One single day in that relationship, even our wedding day, cannot and will not affect the strength of the whole. Neither of us will let that happen.

So, I continue to love my partner, and she continues to love me, and we continue to move forward in our relationship one day at a time. There are bad days, yes, but there are more good days than bad, and we will always face the bad days together. She is my partner, and part of being a partner is working together to face adversity. And, ultimately, isn’t that what is important in a relationship?

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