The above video is four minutes of pure wedding magic. The filmography, the setting, the speeches, the smiles - it feels like a movie, but it's way better because it's someone's actual life. Two someones, in fact.
It's easy to watch this video and clamor for a wedding in the California hills, dressed in designer clothes, orchestrated by professionals. But deep down, that's not what we want. We don't want a wedding. We want a marriage. And we don't want a marriage as much as we want a relationship. And we don't want a relationship as much as we want a raw, human connection to another person who seems to be the exact match for us, who before we met them was walking around wondering if they could find the pair that made them more themselves - and more accurately themselves - than anyone else could.
Ultimately, it's not the wedding that matters, it's the connection. A deep longing satisfied, like that itch we finally are able to reach, the long novel we finished and sat in silence pondering what we'd do differently had the author thought to include us in the narrative, too. It's like finding something you never knew you were looking for, true love. But once you have it, you wonder how you lived without it and you know as intimately as you know the other person that you'd go crazy or never go anywhere again if they were to go away. They are the foundation upon which your identity is built and continually forged. Remove it and all you know to be true crumbles to ruins.
That's the love we want. The heavy kind. The kind that is strong enough to support us and crucial enough to make us want to die if it ever disappears. It's scary as hell, but we should settle for nothing less.
Deep and abiding love is like this, and it accepts no compromises. You may find it online, or at summer camp, or randomly on a Thursday afternoon when you decide to take the bus instead of your car because it's in the shop due to a faulty check engine light that was enough of an issue that the manufacturer issued a recall three months ago and you finally got around to scheduling the free repair just now and thank God that you did because otherwise you never would have met her since she normally walks but since it was raining she decided to take the bus, too, and your awkward smile was enough to let her guard down and you mentioned you'd already read the book that was sitting in her lap and that if she was willing to stick with it past page 122 then she'd love it as much as you did which led her to ask you which authors you thought were totally full of themselves and then you laughed a real - and not forced - laugh that startled you because those 90 seconds unfurled as a complete surprise to you and you would never be the same. Those things that are not accepting of our slacking or compromise are usually those things that blindside us and force us to comply. Thank God love is lenient enough to fill our soul, brain, and hormones with enough pleasure, sacrifice, and belonging that we happily obey its grip on us.
Because we want it. We want someone to come home to, to share return address labels with, and to look at while dinner is warming and ask, "I'm not crazy, am I?" And no matter what they say you'll be content - blissfully content - with the answer because whether you're nuts or boring, they're there.
With you.
In the stuff.
Get married. Or don't. Just chase down that thing you're looking for and when you find it, go on a great adventure together knowing that no matter where you roam you'll always end up in each others' arms. That is the kind of love your soul was made to have. Do not spend time on anything that smacks of cheap imitation. It will not do.
Find a love worth writing about, worth other people's writing about it.