This post originally appeared on our old blog, Born to be a Bride.
In the beginning, it’s all about driving fast and dancing, sitting in dark corners of warm bars unfolding your life stories while your friends quietly warn you against each other. You take hours getting ready for dates with him — sometimes even showering a second time that day because your hair needs to be just so. Eventually you move from champagne and tiny bites of salad in upscale restaurants to Chinese food on the couch and all-day marathons of a newly discovered TV show. His apartment turns into your home-away-from-home while your apartment turns into a large walk-in closet that is suddenly costing you a lot less in water and electric bills than it did before.
And then you meet the parents and you start a Pinterest board and you drop “un-obvious” hints when you’re walking together on a Saturday and catch sight of a bride posing for pictures in Brooklyn Bridge Park. You think about what it might be like to get married and sometimes you even picture in your head what your cute little someday children will look like and it melts your heart. But when he puts a ring on it and then another ring the next year, when you spend months planning and picking, dreaming and designing, only to stop at the top of the aisle feeling like you are starring in the best movie you have ever seen in your life… you are still not totally aware.
When he becomes your husband a new kind of love steps in. Don’t worry, because it doesn’t replace what you already had. It doesn’t erase your memories of the crazy butterflies and dizzy feeling you got the first time he kissed you. It won’t block out your recollections of the moment he knelt before you and it was the first time you realized that he really, truly, wanted to marry you, too. But it builds upon that. It intensifies that. Sometimes you even feel like it is so strong you just need to push him away for a minute just to make sure it is real.
Well, it is real.
This afternoon, I am having a surgery I’ve been dreading for some time now. On Saturday night, I came upon the catastrophic realization that it was my last Saturday night out on the town before things get really intense and a little dark and we can’t quite know when they’ll be back to normal again. But that’s okay, because he’s here. And he’s real.
So, when they wheel me away and drug me up and my husband sneaks out to buy pizza (Yes, honey, I know you don’t eat gluten-free when I’m not around, let alone not conscious), I will not be alone. Things are going to change and life is going to get messy and that’s when the love will get even stronger.
Sure, those were some wonderful, dizzying nights in New York City, fueled by margaritas and miniskirts, cab fare, Kanye, and the occasional cigarette. Yes, we laughed, and yes, we loved. But now he’s more than all of those butterflies could ever produce. Today he’s my husband, my hero, my life. Just wait and see. This is where the magic lies.