Editor’s note: All images are courtesy of the incredibly talented Jessica and Sarah at Cocoa Blue. They are amazing, they’re based in Montana but travel the world and they come highly recommended by me.

The Modern Love Machine and I married one year ago today. Right now he’s in California attending a teaching conference. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, his mother is staying with me while his sister attends freshman orientation at the local college. We exchanged gifts a few days ago after I got home from a business dinner, and we’ll celebrate formally with a fancy meal after I meet up with him in San Francisco on Thursday. We have no leftover wedding cake to pull out of the freezer, and the lady who made all our wedding pies stopped offering shipping a few months back, so we won’t be able to indulge in one of those until the next trip to Memphis.

While I am absolutely excited for the MLM’s opportunity and am happy to have some extra bonding time with the mother-in-law, I’d be lying if I pretended not to be a bit bummed about our piecemeal anniversary celebration and lack of togetherness today.

I’m sure someone wiser than I would tell me this is the essence of marriage. When you marry someone, you don’t just gain your partner in his or her current and solo state. Instead, you gain your partner’s family and friends; you gain his or her successes, future opportunities and failures. What you do not gain is the ability to work everything out perfectly every single time — or ever, for that matter. This is implied in the ‘for better or for worse’ pledge that most of us make in our vows, but you never know exactly how that’s going to play out in real life.

The thing I’m taking away from contemplating our anniversary over and over today is that I’m sort of shocked anniversaries aren’t bigger celebrations than they seem to be on the surface. I certainly feel the urge to mark it in a bigger way than my birthday. I mean, my birthday has happened every single year I’m alive. I had no conscious role in the first one, and all I have to do to get another one is keep myself alive for a year. When it comes to anniversaries, yes, I have to keep myself alive for another year to get one, but I also have to do my part in keeping my marriage alive. While that hasn’t been terribly hard work when it comes to the MLM, it’s still requires more effort than just staying alive.

Anyway, because I never, ever wrote anything here on ye olde blog about our wedding beyond my knee-jerk reaction three days after, I thought I’d celebrate by giving the wedding a little more of its due this week. I’m not going to go straight recap on you because, let’s face it, it was a wedding. (A damn good one.) We did weddingy things. (Damn fun ones.) I’m sure you can kind of picture what’s that like. Instead I’m going to write about a few specific things that happened that day that have left an impact on me and how I think they may or may not have a lasting impact on me and my attitude toward my marriage for years to come. I will finally share photos (good ones because I’m not longer so worried about my anonymity!) And maybe, just maybe the MLM will share his own thoughts at some point. Feel free to encourage him.