Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours

I've written about our anniversary before -- that's the thing about anniversaries, how they keep coming around every year. Last year I kind of didn't make a big deal out of it, since we were in the middle of having our lives turned upside down, but this is one of those anniversaries that ends in a Big Round Number, and since some of our friends who are now married hadn't even met on the day that we exchanged vows, I think this year it's worth a little more notice.

So, to begin with: four hundred thousand and ten years ago, at one o'clock in the afternoon, we got married. We got married in a beautiful Catholic church, a church that has been a part of my family for a long time, the church where my father's parents and so many of my father's siblings were married, the same church where my own sister will be getting married this summer.

To have and to hold, to love and to cherish, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, from this day forward, until death do us part. I did then, and I do now, and I always will, as long as you never make me say "obey." I agreed to love and honor, yes, but not obey.

Ours is not a Great Love Story, but it is a pretty damned good one. I've said before, eleventy hundred zillion times, that you are not perfect, but you are perfect for me. You have tolerated a great deal of insanity and foolishness, even more insanity and pigheadedness, and did I mention the insanity? But at the end of our days, I still feel now like I did then.

You and me, we're a pair of ducks.

And I love you.
Always, and all ways.

All photos by Troy Schnyder.