We got our wedding pictures. And they are lovely. (A deep and heartfelt thanks to our wonderful photographer Justine Bursoni!) Even though it’s only been a couple months, it feels like a different era. And it’s nice to see the smiles and laughter of memories confirmed in photographs. But it’s still hard to shake how weird getting married was.

In the first place, it wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to die a virgin at the age of 20 (don’t ask). But then I didn’t like the idea of dying before I finished college. And by the time I graduated, living was too much of a habit to quit so easily.

Suffice it to say, I’m still alive. But it’s hard to let go of the childhood vision we create of our adult selves. The life I dreamed up for myself (being a ballerina-writer who lived in a loft in Manhattan with 12 cats named for each month of the year) left no room for relationships, let alone marriage. The way I saw it, the only reason you got married (instead of choosing a less institutionally based commitment) was because you wanted to have children (because I’m a little old fashioned on that front). And I didn’t want children.

But I grew to want them. A series of bad relationships will do that to a person, apparently. So I thought maybe I’d get married, after all. But I didn’t see how it was possible. Even if I found someone, everything was so complicated. Sure, marriage, but I couldn’t see how to make a wedding work. I’d have to elope. And maybe tell my family about it when I was too blatantly pregnant to get away with it.

And then I met the man who would become my husband. And it was incredible. And I fell in love. And it felt the way everyone said it would. I couldn’t roll my eyes anymore. It was real and very determinedly in my life. And then he proposed (after I proposed on more than one occasion, but he says those didn’t count. Grumble grumble). And there we were. And a wedding still doesn’t make any sense to me (even now that I’ve had not one but two…or three? But that’s for another time).

But I desperately wanted to marry the guy. And in the grand scheme of things, having a wedding turned out to be not so bad. It may not have been the happiest day(s) of my life, but there are some moments that I will treasure forever that wouldn’t have happened in any other circumstance. For that, I am grateful.