Marriage is what brings us together today...

Eight years ago today I got married.

I would love to post pictures of our wedding, but there aren't any that I am aware of.

So instead I will tell you the pictures that are in the photo album in my brain.

-I stand in the empty shop at TRF with a bouquet of daisies clutched in my hand peering out through the cracks in the door at the darkness trying not to shake from nerves as B calmly pets my arm.

-The entire seating area of the Castle stage seems to be filled with people, their smiling faces turned to me as I make my way toward the stage. An old makeshift cage on wheels sits at the back and the husbeast is inside with heavy metal shackles on watching me approach. Someone thought it was funny to keep him from 'escaping' the wedding.

-It is dark despite the flood lights on the stage. Four of my best friends stand in a circle around us. The air is full of tiny bubbles as the people have decided to use the little bottles they were handed during the ceremony instead of at the end. One largish bubble floats up and hovers between us. For a moment I can see him inverted through the soapy orb.

-Paul wraps a cord around our hands binding us together and I realize his hand is trembling as much as mine is.

-There is a misspoken word in the ceremony and Paul says "You will now give up sheep" instead of "give up sleep". It only takes a few seconds before the highland gamers in the audience begin bleating like sheep and everyone is reduced to a fit of giggles.

-We move up the aisle under an arch of swords still tied together, laughing with joy and relief.

-A cake in the shape of a spider is produced as someones idea of a joke for the grooms cake. The husbeast looks at it horrified and without hesitation sinks the cake knife into its large grey frosted head. The white icing from the wedding cake that had remained on the knife oozes from the wound making it look like the spiders brains are leaking out.

-We sit curled into one another on a stone bench under the East Texas starry night. Our friends run about laughing and shouting throwing water at one another having a grand time. Laughter and happiness fill the air.

-A tiny scrap of notebook paper with my vows to him written in pencil is carefully folded and tucked into his wallet behind his ID like the most treasured possession in the world.



It wasn't a traditional wedding. I had no dress, he had no suit, everything was sort of slapped together. There was no first dance or tossing of garters and bouquets. There were none of the things that I had always dreamed of for a wedding.

At the end of the day though I was his wife and he was my husbeast. In the end that was all that mattered, and all I had ever really dreamed of. I wouldn't trade those images in my mind for all the fluffy white dresses and fondant covered cakes in the world.