Five Things to Know Before Saying “I Do”

Next week, my husband and I will celebrate our fourteenth wedding anniversary. I had to open the calculator on my desktop to figure out that number, something I never thought would happen. We adore each other too much to ever forget which milestone of marital bliss we’ve reached. Right? But let’s face it, I can’t remember how old I am half of the time—a little more than forty, a lot less than fifty—so I’m not surprised that the date on which I started wearing a ring on my left hand doesn’t always stand out.

I still remember the wedding, of course. It was sweet and small. Sixty friends came and set up chairs, then took them down when the sky filled with rain, and set them up again just in time for the 5:00 p.m. ceremony. As I’d hoped, there were lilacs everywhere. I remember falling in love with my husband just as distinctly. There was the night when he tucked me into bed by telling me a story about a three-legged dog, then kissed me on the forehead and let himself out. I was hooked. I’m still hooked every time one of our kids (My gosh, we made these adorable little people?) says something brilliant or hysterical and I look across the table at Andrew who is smiling just as broadly.

Our marriage is good, but is it the Pottery Barn-perfect image I sometimes imagined it would be? Definitely not. There are way more dust bunnies than I could have imagined. Andrew isn’t the person I thought he’d be, but neither am I.

“If I’d know everything about marriage when I was twenty-three, I probably never would have gone through with it,” says my friend Jane, who has been married for nearly thirty years. I drink to that. If you’re busy planning your spring or summer nuptials and hoping for imminent matrimonial bliss, please, don’t let me stop you. But let these gentle rules, cobbled together from an array of contented couples, be my gift to you. They’re almost as good as lilacs and much longer lasting.