An Update on the Realness

Focus on the baby deer.
Let the warm fuzzy feelings wash over you.
This is how I feel all the time now.

While my post from earlier this week accurately reflected my excitement and dread for wedding planning, upon rereading it, I realized I left out the most surreal and wonderful feelings I experienced: relief and happiness.

As I've written before, it wasn't easy to be engaged and not have any kind of wedding to plan, because I didn't even know when Dave and I would be in the same place again. It's something we've really struggled with but had come to accept for the time being. I took my mom's advice to heart ("You will have many, many years of happiness together! Don't worry about these few!") and tried to focus on the journey-of-a-thousand-steps mentality that has given me the strength to get through this long distance relationship for two years and counting.

In the end, the decision to finally set a date, plan a wedding, and get started on this new chapter in our lives came incredibly simply: Dave and I started talking about the future. We decided together that we wanted to be married sooner rather than later and so we figured out a way to make it work. I was so nervous when we started to tell people--for some reason I kept expecting people to say we were crazy or rushing into things or acting selfish, but the response from friends and family, overwhelmingly positive (with lots of "It's about time"s), has helped me to realize this is actually happening.

For some reason, having set a date makes this whole marriage thing so real for me, much more than getting engaged. While I was thrilled to get engaged, I still knew that it would likely be years before I could start this wonderful future with the man I loved, and there was something inherently heart-breaking about that. I could plan, but I couldn't, I could think about it, but it could potentially make me very sad.

Now, though, I am over the moon with happiness, and so so so excited to finally (finally!) finish this crazy long-distance lifestyle Dave and I lead: No more airports, buses, trains, cars! No more $300 tickets, rain delays, missed transfers! No more saying good-bye on Sunday nights! No more nightly hour-long phone calls! No more counting the days until we see each other! As if I needed more reasons to be excited to get married....

Wow! I'm getting married! For reals! And Dave's going to be my husband! Some times life is crazy wonderful :)