Five Years

Five years ago today on a farm in northwest Illinois, my wife and I drove to our wedding on a tractor. She was wearing a dress she made herself and I was wearing a traditional ceremonial Indian outfit (complete with curly, pointy shoes!) brought to the U.S. by relatives. The tractor, a six-wheeled John Deere Gator, was a fitting chariot for an excursion through an apple orchard, a mud puddle, across a land bridge, and up a small hill to a throng of people wondering exactly which cultish ritual they had signed up to attend.

Our dogs and 80 or so humans were in attendance while a judge who, in a ceremony about as long as a trip through the Portillo’s drive-thru during non-peak hours, read vows we had written ourselves. We then stuffed our faces first with Indian food then a three-layer cake (carrot, chocolate, and Indian rice pudding flavors) which Nara and her mom made the day prior.

It was by far the best wedding I’ve ever attended and easily one of the best days of my life so far. Even though whole endeavor was completely improvised from start to finish it still managed, I think, to convey that the eclectic, creative, crafty, irreverent and beautiful aspects of her personality could blend rather successfully with the best I have to offer: emotionally distant anal-retentiveness (and a freakish absence of body odor). And I couldn’t be more thrilled to say that five years later, that nothing about that has changed. We’re still improvising, and we’re still blending successfully. And I still smell good.

Our wedding invitation, a postcard, aptly paraphrases the last 1800+ days:

Love you, honey.