I got married today.

And yes, I gave up a $10,000 wedding.

But, I got married. And it was a surprise that Derek planned all alone, and I was in a pretty white dress that may have been all of $5 that he ordered off of the Wish App.

But I got married today. In last night’s curls, make up I had no time to re-do and nail polish Derek picked himself, quickly done.

You may think I’m crazy, anyone would. Getting handed such a prize and giving it to another. But after 26 years of life, I finally figured out my own definition of what love is, and it doesn’t involve $10,000. Not even $1,000. It doesn’t involve the show of it all, the glitz and the glam, the proving to hundreds of people that I have the money that I do not.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to put into words what ‘love’ means to me, ever since I locked eyes with Derek almost 3 years ago in the midnight madness of the bar scene. I was broken, I was bitter. I was an empty shell of
a person, alive but not living. The journey that Derek and I have been on has defined me as a person. I’m proud to say that because of us, I know what love means to me.

Love is the man who stands beside me as my anxiety cripples to my knees. Love, in the moments when the darkness of my anxiety forces me to close down, gives me the strength to always keep the door cracked; knowing Derek will be the light that always peaks in.

Love led us to a restaurant the night before our wedding, into the arms of two couples who’d been together for over 40 years, as they prayed over us where we sat, and raised their glasses to the hope of a life long-lived - together. Love does that, you see. It’s ever around us, ever close. It’s the hold in the universe that binds you to another soul and the gravity that pulls you to the only person on the planet that can bring you to your feet in a bar full of all of 2 people, to slow dance to Train’s ‘Marry me’, knowing you won’t get an ‘official’ first dance on your big day. conservative prom dresses

Love isn’t monetary. Love is in the eyes of the person standing before you vowing to be your everlasting, in a world ever changing. Our love began in a slow dance. Our future began in a small chapel, in a place we’ve never been, in front of a pastor we’ve never met, and after a mad dash through a town with no map to be on time to even that, as the adventure in the both of us was bound to make us late. This is our love.

These are the ties that bind. These are the moments that I’ve relished in, and I’m proud to be bound to my forever, eternally.