London engagement session by Tarah Coonan; September 2012
I have to start this with a huge thank you to Jon; he doesn't entirely understand my need to publish satisfying Wedding Wednesday posts but listened patiently as our goodnight Skype turned into a ramble about today's topic and only once, gently, reminded me that he had to go to bed.
You know that long distance has been a struggle for us, as it is for most couples in similar situations. What you don't know is that part of the reason it has been so stressful and tense is that we've encountered a few roadblocks on the way to legally getting married in the UK. I'm not comfortable sharing the details on the blog until it's all a bit more settled, but I will tell you that when we had our phone consultation with the lawyer on Monday we asked why we'd never heard of transatlantic couples having these issues before. "Oh, they do have these issues," she said. "They just don't know that they exist and so they bulldoze through them, usually without consequences." The she laughed. "Your problem is that your research was too thorough!"
The past few months of dealing with this have been instrumental in highlighting the differences between having a wedding and getting married. Ideally, of course, you'll do both at the same time, but it's not always logistically or bureaucratically an option and Jon and I did have to face the possibility of the two being distinct and separate. It forced me to think about what it means to get married; what it means to vow until death do you part regardless of the pomp and circumstance of a ceremony, what it means to distill the moment into the purest expression of love between two people, and what it means to start the rest of your lives together surrounded by those who love you most dearly.
We'll be back to the Wedding Wednesday frills next week, dear readers, but I wanted to take a moment to share these thoughts with you today. I don't know many people who have eloped - Megan and Stephen's beautifully intimate day is the closest thing I can think of - and we are jumping through every hoop to ensure that our dreams can materialize as planned, but I am grateful for the reminder that, at the end of the day...
