Check out this write-up of the wedding in Time Out Chicago this week. You can see me as a bridesmaid in one of the photos of the wedding party — I’m the tall brunette, second from right.

I actually didn’t know a ton of people at this wedding, aside from Ashley and Mark, but two of my best Chicago gals Jess & Emilie were also there. I love this photo of us taken that night on our picnic blanket at the reception. Although it had rained all day it ended up being one of those perfect, humid summer nights where crickets were singing and fireflies blinked in the trees at the edge of the field; one of those nights that will become easy to return to in my head for years to come.

We can’t quite imagine all that is before us — Chicago winters, the birth of our daughter, friends and summers and cross-country moves and books and pain and peace and fear and laughter. We can’t quite imagine it, but we know it’s coming all the same.

We celebrated over the weekend by going out for sushi and a movie on Saturday. I wanted to do something simple so we just walked up to Lincoln Square and noshed on half-priced happy hour sushi at Tank. We talked about all the fun things we want to do in our life together and all the ways we want to celebrate all the people we love. After that we met up with Greg's best friend Tarek and our friends Sandy and Sarah and we all went to see Inception, which I totally enjoyed. 

The last two years have gone by quickly. It's been easy to be married. I've found it calming and deeply satisfying. Before Greg I was in a couple of long-term relationships. In fact, I've always been a relationship kind of person. I had two long-term boyfriends in high school and then two long-term boyfriends in my twenties.

But the difference between those relationships and the one I have with Greg is that those from the past were fraught with doubt and experimentation. I never felt quite sure that they were what I wanted, and I never felt quite myself within the context of who we were as a whole.

But that's not the case with Greg. I know that we are young and that our marriage is also youthful, but I have felt a difference there from the very beginning. I remember one night, early on in our courtship, when we were really just going over that waterfall of falling in love, and I remember thinking that every relationship I'd ever had, every disappointment, every failure, every misstep and every grievance had all led up to me becoming the woman I was right then in that moment — the woman that was able to meet and fall in love with this man.

Realizing that gave me the most profound sense of gratitude for all that I had shared with others. Anything I ever wished I could take back or do over was suddenly cast in a new light, for I realized that everything I had learned about myself and about how to be with others enabled me to be with Greg.

And I still feel that. Even when our relationship gets muffled by too little time, by diapers and bills and car issues, I never lose my sense of the deep foundation we share.

I just spent some time uploading some of my favorite wedding photos to my Flickr account. It was fun to revisit that weekend. As much as I fought against the idea of a wedding day being the best day of my life, it turned out to be exactly that.