H: Dude, that guy looks like K Fed. I wonder if they are parodying him.
S: Yeah, haha!
*later*
H: God, that guy really looks like Kevin Frederline. You think it’s really him?
S: No.
H: Yeah, CSI, has higher standards than that.

It was totally him!

A married friend told me that getting married was so much better than dating because you didn’t always have to worry that he was going to leave you all the time, but I haven’t ever worried about that in the entire course of our relationship so there is no difference there.

Another friend told me that once you are married, it’s better because you work as a team but Steve and I have worked as a team for the last 2 or 3 years now (Team-o Supreme-o) especially when it came to being a united front to outside forces. It stopped being "you and I" and long time ago and became "we."

Oddly enough, after all the fuss and chaos of the wedding, being married is not actually any different from how life was before. I know we are only 2 weeks into it, but I half expected some big change in our relationship based on what friends had told me. After all the work and ceremony we are still Hillary and Steve and we still make Sloppy Joes with ground turkey, call each other ludicrous pet names, act like 5 year olds, add "o" to the end of every word and do happy dances randomly for our own amusement.

Now I know there are going to be other things that are going to throw off our routine such as kids, menopause, financial and physical issues that come with aging and other unforseen situations that come up, but I like that fact that, right now, being married is just like being how we always were, but now it’s just all official-like.

You know why I think most marriages fail? I am going to use the Sims to illustrate my point. In the Sims, when you want two Sims to get married, at first, it’s a lot of work. You flirt, admire, backrub, chat, peck, dirty joke, smooch, serenade, make-out etc until finally you get them to be engaged. Then you keep them appeased with more romantic kisses, sweet talks and wahoo’s in the hot tub while you buy a wedding arch, some chairs and a buffet table. Then you invite over all their friends and try to keep everyone in a good enough mood that you get a good party rating and then you let them get married.

But then, once they are married and the party is over, the groom is on the toilet taking a crap while the bride eats a moldy lunch meat sandwich while standing up and real life begins. When I play, unless I want them to have a baby, I pretty much never have the couple interact again  unless they are desperate for social contact and instead concentrate on furthering their careers and social lives.

I think this is how most people try to make real life marriages work. Once they’ve snagged the husband/wife they no longer make little romantic gestures or work at the relationship, because they figure the hard part is over.

Sure, there is always going to be that time when one of you is passed out in the road with the carpool beeping at you and when the other is cradling a flour sack and refusing to study mechanical, but as long as you can weather those times, and still work on your relationship together. I like the fact that Steve and I’s relationship hasn’t changed a bit. I like it because, if we can keep it this way, it means that we will stay at the same even keel no matter what life sends us.

Except for the zombies. I don’t know how we’ll handle those.

Yesterday was, for me and Steve, the first Sunday in ordinary time.

For the first weekend in just about a year, it was the first weekend that we weren’t on our honeymoon, running around doing wedding or house purchasing related stuff. All we did was help my parents dismantle their deck. (Random depressing fact: By taking down the deck ourselves, we saved my parents $900. Granted it was an entire day of back breaking work for all 4 of us. Put into perspective, the people who blew off the wedding and didn’t show still cost us $750 so the entire time we were working, my mom kept saying "at least we are working off the no shows." Ouch.)

That night we made dinner for my parents and watched The Producers (I enjoyed it thoroughly and I have seen the Broadway show with the original cast). Sunday, Steve watched football for what seemed like 12 hours while I put in a full day’s work (on my laptop, to keep him company) to make up for some lost hours from the honeymoon. Then we opened the 8 million cards from the wedding. (One of Steve’s relatives made their check out to Mark and Hillary which is just funny).

My brother gave us this large stack of presents before the wedding with very strict instructions on whose present was whose. Since that was over 2 weeks, we called him to remind us of which was which. He says, "The box shaped one is yours and the large box shaped one is for Steve. The smaller box shaped one is for both of you and the square one is, well, I forget who that is for." This was not helpful. Since they were all "box shaped" but were each in different wrapping paper, I asked if he could identify them that way. He could not remember. We are hoping it will become clear to us when we open them.

Today is the first day that I have had time to actually sit and digest the wedding. To be honest, I don’t remember most of it, it’s a blur so I am hoping friends will send me pictures so it will jog my memory.

Steve’s mother says I shouldn’t tell people this, but I think it’s better that people understand why I was weird or otherwise making horrible faces. I spent the entire wedding day sicker than I have possibly ever been in my life. I made the call that I would rather dance than anything else so I did  not eat or drink anything (part where Steve fed me the cake I was whispering to him "smaller, please smaller" because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep that bite down) the entire reception and managed to get through the whole evening with a great many close calls and only one time actually getting ill in the bathroom. There is a part of me that really regrets that I didn’t get to eat even a bite of all the food we picked out, but since I didn’t get sick on the dance floor and missed a minimum of the wedding in the bathroom, it suppose things were as good and could have been expected.

The big problem with being sick on a major life event is that you want to downplay it so that people leave you alone and don’t fuss, but at the same time, then you run the risk of people thinking you’re not really that sick and you have problems like when I started to gag and was nearly ill at the after party and started to run for a bathroom, my father in law running after me because he wanted a hug.

That is the big BUT, so I wanted to get that out there. Obviously, that I was that sick is my biggest regret. That said, I had a good time besides that. I had a lot of fun dancing with my gang (Larry and Tom are instant party) and my family (the party improved a ton for me when my cousins started dancing. When they were just standing there, they were bringing me down).

There were so many tears shed, apologies made, and fences mended among my family that I feel like we all ascended to a higher level of being. Most importantly, my dad and mom had a lot of fun and a lot of people, not just my friends but people from their generation and older who have been to a whole lot more, came up and said that this was the best wedding they had ever been to. That meant a lot to them. I’m not going to tell my family how much they rule here because none of them read my blog.

The only remaining source of wedding stress is that I want to see the pictures and video to make sure everything looks OK. Right now I am envisioning a million ways they might have gone wrong so I am worried, so I will feel much better once I have seen them.

My own personal highlights were: my  mom declaring her love for Sonia to her in the bathroom, my brother’s speech, looking over at my brother while dancing with Dad and then seeing that not only he but the entire the wedding party was crying, dancing with grandpa to Pepino (!!!), Casey and Jocey giving sobriety tests, Dad and Mom’s dance, Steve and I’s last dance (even though it was freaking INTERRUPTED!!!!!), the bridesmaid/groomsman speeches at the rehearsal dinner, my mom’s slide show and walking around the cocktail hour with my Mini-Me.

Oh and a personal victory: Someone asked my mom at work where she bought that "really neat ribbon things" we used for the church exit as they wanted to purchase some for their own wedding. Those are a Hillary original, baby, and I have the glue stick burns to prove it!

Anyway, thank you to everyone who helped to make this wedding a reality and such a wonderful time. Thank you also for your various MySpace tributes. My family and I got such a kick out of reading them and getting to relive the wedding through your eyes.

I could write much more about this, but I really have to actually do some work now. More observations to come later!