after the wedding

I ordered wedding photos today. We've been married for almost one and a half years and I just ordered wedding photos to frame. When we planned the wedding I also planned after the wedding; I planned the photo books I'd print and the photos I'd frame all around the apartment. I planned to memorialize the wedding all around us. And I still plan to have books made and photos hung. It's just not as important now that I'm on the other side of the wedding. Now that I am really married and actually know deep in my heart, instead of just claiming to know, that the wedding is not the most important day of our lives. I will not go so far as to say that it is the least important day in our life. I will instead say that it is the first day in our life; what sort of fool claims that the first day is the most important? 

Being newlywed does not give much weight to my words, I am not the wise woman speaking with 50 or more years of marriage experience to call upon. Instead I am a relative child in the world of marriage and hopefully see with the clarity of a child, from the mouths of babes, as they say. Or I could be entirely wrong and in 50 years will laugh at the memory of a younger me who thought she understood being married. Because I do think I understand being married. I understand that the wedding was the beginning of a new life for me and my husband. I understand that when I said "I do" that I was agreeing to a life based on faith. I do--believe you love me forever, believe that I love you forever, believe that we can beat the statistics, believe that even when we fight we love, believe that no matter what the universe throws at us that together we will get through. 

I do.

Believe.

I believe in marriage and, more specifically my marriage. I also believe that while filling my home with wedding mementos is not an important act in my marriage that it is a good thing. I hope that every time we pause in the hallway to look at these photos we remember the choice we made to make a life together. I hope the reminder that we are married makes us smile as much in 50 years as it does now. 

I believe it will.