Pre-nniversary

It's a little bit of heartsick, even as it's kind of sweet.

Today is June 20, 2013. Our plan was to wed on June 20, 2014. Today would be our one-year pre-nniversary.

Unfortunately, Jimmy and I know now that we will have to postpone our wedding. We already had a seriously long engagement, but there are a lot of reasons for that. Now we have a few more.

One of the biggest reasons we decided to be engaged for two years was money. No, we are not having a big wedding - in fact, it's a pretty small affair. But there are still some minimum costs. It may not sound like much when you put down the numbers, but when you consider how little we make and how much teenagers eat, you realize it takes a long time to save even a small amount of money.

But there are other reasons for a long engagement. It isn't just about flowers and rice, you know. It's about preparing to be married. Both of us have done this before, and we know the devastation of divorce much too well. We do not want to rack up another disaster - we've already got three between us. We decided to be engaged for a long time to prepare ourselves emotionally and spiritually to be married.

Spiritually: that's a part that no one really talks about. We were in a bookstore some months ago, and I remarked that there were tons of books on planning a wedding, and plenty more books on how to catch a man (only two on how to catch a woman, both sleazy), lots of books on fixing your broken marriage and surviving your divorce. I couldn't find a single book on preparing for marriage, not in a religious sense or the secular.

Our priest recently retired, and our church won't have even an interim priest until the end of the summer. Our premarital counseling is required by our faith, and we will need approval from both the priest and the bishop in order to be married in the church after divorce. That takes time, too.

Still, we had a plan. We would go through all our preparations together, save our pennies and get the banns stamped by the church. Then we'd snag our tax returns next winter and marry in June.

But Jimmy was laid off for a while, and that hit us hard. He's thankfully employed again, but at a much lower salary. I've started my photo shop to raise money, which is helping to make up the shortfall, but we were getting nervous. Still, we thought we'd just downscale our plans to fit a lower budget.

However, we've been informed that one of the people in our wedding party can't travel in June. Sticking to our original date means losing him from the wedding - he wouldn't even be able to attend, much less don a tux. And it's absolutely horrible timing for my father and stepmother; that's the month they are planning to move halfway across the state after their retirement. We couldn't have picked a worse time for them to help us celebrate our marriage.

So Jimmy and I reluctantly came to the conclusion that we will have to postpone the wedding. The date of June 20 means a lot to us, so I briefly floated the idea of waiting until the following June 20, in 2015. Jimmy's head spun around and he began speaking in tongues, so I figured that meant NO. August, maybe. Or September. Possibly a Saturday afternoon, now that we're not tied to that particular Friday night.

Still, there's a bit of bittersweet today. My email inbox is full of helpful reminders from The Knot and other wedding sites that today is one year until my wedding! Here's a list of things to do this month! Not so much, Knotheads.

Anniversaries are important. Grumps may complain that they're just excuses for Hallmark to exist, like Mother's Day and Valentine's Day. But anyone who's ever been married knows how easy it is for days to become weeks to become months and suddenly you realize it's been forever since you remembered to say "I love you" to the one sleeping next to you, and much longer since you really looked at her and saw her. The people we live with seem to fade into the furniture, and taking someone you love for granted is much too easy in the hustle of everyday life.

Anniversaries help us remember, and so do the Hallmark Holidays. They remind us to take a moment, to share a memory or two, to really look at each other and marvel that someone is in your life. It may be the anniversary of your wedding, the anniversary of your first kiss or your first date or the moment you first looked at her and felt that strange sensation in the pit of your stomach, like the world just turned under your feet. Next month it will be the anniversary of our moment before the castle, when Jimmy tripped on something and fell down to one knee in a magic land with glitter in the air. That's a memory worth keeping.

So now we need to pick our next anniversary, the big one. And we'll pick it for sane and practical reasons, but keeping in mind always that this step is bigger than lace doilies and cake, people. It's more important than the party, as much fun as that will be. It's a sacrament, a binding intended for lifetime, and it's worth preparing for properly - and celebrating with our family and friends.

Happy pre-nniversary, love. Even if it isn't.